Nifty Web Services Trick

Thanks to Brady Gaster for this neat little tidbit. Did you know that you can control the look and feel of the Web Service access page that .NET generates? Habib Heydarian from the Visual C++ team clues us in:

Look for a file called DefaultWsdlHelpGenerator.aspx in the %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.XXXX\CONFIG directory. This is the file that is used to display the output. You can rovide your own page, but you need to change web.config to point to your own page.

The section you need to add in web.config looks like this:

<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <webServices>
            <wsdlHelpGenerator href="MyPage.aspx" />
        </webServices>
    </system.web>
</configuration>

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Once you set this page in the web.config file, copy the default file from the location specified above into your web project. Once you do this, you should be able to get design-time support for the page.

This file is also an excellent example of how to deal with WDSL files. All the C# code that is used to generate the page is right there. It also does a lot of custom HTTP request stuff, as well as manipulating SOAP messages. I think Don Box would agree with me when I say that everyone who does serious work with web services should know this file inside and out. I will know how this file works before I go take my Web Services MCSD test, and I'm gonna make Brady hold me to that.