How do I mix message encoding types (Text/MTOM) in the Request & Response of a Web Service client application using WCF (or WSE 3)?

Question

Here is my problem. I am hitting a web service (hosted on a Java based server) that will only accept text encoded Requests, but it returns MTOM Responses. What I've found is that if I set the web service to RequireMtom, it sends an Mtom request! Unfortunately, the server chokes on an Mtom request and returns a 500 error. However, if I set it to Text message encoding, the response comes back correctly with a multipart MIME (MTOM) response that errors out the Microsoft Web Service API (sample error below). It's expecting a text encoded response because the request was text encoded. I would like to RequireMtom on the response only. Can anyone help me here?

As you can see in the error below (which occurs with the standard web services API, WCF or WSE3), when I send the request with text encoding, the response comes back correctly with all the data in a multipart/related response, but the .net framework chokes!

ERROR MESSAGE WITH WSE:

Client found response content type of 'multipart/related; type="text/xml"; start="<1AE0B46A85B0186B5D136D12E1EE286E>";  boundary="----=_Part_209564_1891070135.1226526701833"', but expected 'text/xml'.
The request failed with the error message:

 at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.ReadResponse(SoapClientMessage message, WebResponse response, Stream responseStream, Boolean asyncCall)
   at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters)
   at TestWseService.AdesaJasperWse.ManagementServiceService.runReport(String requestXmlString) in C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\TestWseService\Web References\AdesaJasperWse\Reference.cs:line 229
   at TestWseService.Form1.buttonRunService_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\TestWseService\Form1.cs:line 42

ERROR MESSAGE WITH WCF

The content type multipart/related; type="text/xml"; start="<30ED8FE3004CDA67723CC7164A6CFEEC>";    boundary="----=_Part_209545_389093169.1226526546805" of the response message does not match the content type of the binding (text/xml; charset=utf-8). If using a custom encoder, be sure that the IsContentTypeSupported method is implemented properly. The first 1024 bytes of the response were: 

Server stack trace: 
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelUtilities.ValidateRequestReplyResponse(HttpWebRequest request, HttpWebResponse response, HttpChannelFactory factory, WebException responseException)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelFactory.HttpRequestChannel.HttpChannelRequest.WaitForReply(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.RequestChannel.Request(Message message, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.RequestChannelBinder.Request(Message message, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.Call(String action, Boolean oneway, ProxyOperationRuntime operation, Object[] ins, Object[] outs, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.Call(String action, Boolean oneway, ProxyOperationRuntime operation, Object[] ins, Object[] outs)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelProxy.InvokeService(IMethodCallMessage methodCall, ProxyOperationRuntime operation)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelProxy.Invoke(IMessage message)

Request (with Text Message Encoding):

POST /jasperserver-pro/services/repository HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
VsDebuggerCausalityData: uIDPo7V2+runH+xGudbec7ueUU8AAAAA7H9vL3stlkCBofMgLa5DWkQOHHpBdy1Ek6P6nXx7FpsACQAA
SOAPAction: ""
Authorization: Basic amFzcGVyYWRtaW46akBzcDNyQGRtJW4=
Host: reports.dev.xxx.com
Content-Length: 789
Expect: 100-continue

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"><s:Body s:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"><q1:runReport xmlns:q1="http://axis2.ws.jasperserver.jaspersoft.com"><requestXmlString xsi:type="xsd:string">&lt;request operationName="runReport" locale="en"&gt;&#xD;
&lt;argument name="RUN_OUTPUT_FORMAT"&gt;HTML&lt;/argument&gt;&#xD;
&lt;resourceDescriptor name="" wsType="" uriString="/BusinessIntelligence/MOS/Reports/dotnettest" isNew="false"&gt;&#xD;
&lt;label&gt;null&lt;/label&gt;&#xD;
&lt;parameter name="testparam"&gt;1&lt;/parameter&gt;&#xD;
&lt;/resourceDescriptor&gt;&#xD;
&lt;/request&gt;</requestXmlString></q1:runReport></s:Body></s:Envelope>

Response (with Text Message Encoding):

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:49:04 GMT
Server: IBM_HTTP_Server
Surrogate-Control: no-store
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=0000z5pH1xEMyulueASctjru2qe:13kftunf6; Path=/
Expires: Thu, 01 Dec 1994 16:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache="set-cookie, set-cookie2"
Content-Length: 2580
Content-Type: multipart/related; type="text/xml"; start="<30ED8FE3004CDA67723CC7164A6CFEEC>";   boundary="----=_Part_209545_389093169.1226526546805"
Content-Language: en-US


------=_Part_209545_389093169.1226526546805
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
Content-Id: <30ED8FE3004CDA67723CC7164A6CFEEC>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"><soapenv:Body><ns1:runReportResponse soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:ns1="http://axis2.ws.jasperserver.jaspersoft.com"><runReportReturn xsi:type="xsd:string">&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&gt;
&lt;operationResult version=&quot;2.0.1&quot;&gt;
    &lt;returnCode&gt;&lt;![CDATA[0]]&gt;&lt;/returnCode&gt;
&lt;/operationResult&gt;
</runReportReturn></ns1:runReportResponse></soapenv:Body></soapenv:Envelope>
------=_Part_209545_389093169.1226526546805
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
Content-Id: <report>

<html>
<head>
  <title></title>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
  <style type="text/css">
    a {text-decoration: none}
  </style>
</head>
<body text="#000000" link="#000000" alink="#000000" vlink="#000000">
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr><td width="50%">&nbsp;</td><td align="center">

<a name="JR_PAGE_ANCHOR_0_1"/>
<table style="width: 595px" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" bgcolor="white">
<tr>
  <td><img alt="" src="images/px" style="width: 35px; height: 1px;"/></td>
  <td><img alt="" src="images/px" style="width: 189px; height: 1px;"/></td>
  <td><img alt="" src="images/px" style="width: 253px; height: 1px;"/></td>
  <td><img alt="" src="images/px" style="width: 118px; height: 1px;"/></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
  <td colspan="4"><img alt="" src="images/px" style="width: 595px; height: 20px;"/></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
  <td><img alt="" src="images/px" style="width: 35px; height: 30px;"/></td>
  <td valign="middle"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0px; font-weight: bold;">The value of the parameter is:</span></td>
  <td valign="middle"><span style="font-family: Arial; background-color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 12.0px; font-weight: bold;">1</span></td>
  <td><img alt="" src="images/px" style="width: 118px; height: 30px;"/></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
  <td colspan="4"><img alt="" src="images/px" style="width: 595px; height: 20px;"/></td>
</tr>
</table>

</td><td width="50%">&nbsp;</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

------=_Part_209545_389093169.1226526546805--

Request (with Mtom Message Encoding):

POST /jasperserver-pro/services/repository HTTP/1.1
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/related; type="application/xop+xml";start="<http://tempuri.org/0>";boundary="uuid:fafcdca7-94f7-4884-a8d4-5c6d50dbe8ef+id=1";start-info="text/xml"
VsDebuggerCausalityData: uIDPo+cN2kKX2odFuUVaER0j60gAAAAAmfYaGH7Ow0WQOcwhebh5pqmDl29omcVOtwVGa10IWewACQAA
SOAPAction: ""
Authorization: Basic amFzcGVyYWRtaW46akBzcDNyQGRtJW4=
Host: reports.dev.xxx.com
Content-Length: 1031
Expect: 100-continue


--uuid:fafcdca7-94f7-4884-a8d4-5c6d50dbe8ef+id=1
Content-ID: <http://tempuri.org/0>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: application/xop+xml;charset=utf-8;type="text/xml"

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"><s:Body s:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"><q1:runReport xmlns:q1="http://axis2.ws.jasperserver.jaspersoft.com"><requestXmlString xsi:type="xsd:string">&lt;request operationName="runReport" locale="en"&gt;&#xD;
&lt;argument name="RUN_OUTPUT_FORMAT"&gt;HTML&lt;/argument&gt;&#xD;
&lt;resourceDescriptor name="" wsType="" uriString="/BusinessIntelligence/MOS/Reports/dotnettest" isNew="false"&gt;&#xD;
&lt;label&gt;null&lt;/label&gt;&#xD;
&lt;parameter name="testparam"&gt;1&lt;/parameter&gt;&#xD;
&lt;/resourceDescriptor&gt;&#xD;
&lt;/request&gt;</requestXmlString></q1:runReport></s:Body></s:Envelope>
--uuid:fafcdca7-94f7-4884-a8d4-5c6d50dbe8ef+id=1--

Response (with Mtom Message Encoding):

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:47:42 GMT
Server: IBM_HTTP_Server
Surrogate-Control: no-store
$WSEP: 
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=0000_iMrdp-TnK9FG3jZFzjx_hA:13kftunf6; Path=/
Expires: Thu, 01 Dec 1994 16:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache="set-cookie, set-cookie2"
Content-Length: 12
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Content-Language: en-US

Error 500: 

Here is a link that supports the theory that Microsoft does not support mixed encodings:

WSE 3.0: MTOM response mandatory for MTOM request?

UHG!

Admissive

Beware: WSE is obsolete. WCF should be used for all future web service development, and existing WSE code should be migrated or retired ASAP. – Hydrolysis

Answer 1

Yes you can send a text message and get an mtom reply(or vise versa)with WCF.

see...

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wcf/thread/480f1bc4-1fc4-40e9-a2ed-efcf3009d6ef

Famous

Answer 2

I researched a bit about this and the bad news is that from WCF point of view the request and response MUST use the same enconding. So yeah, the answer above is quite correct. You have to organize with service provider to enable MTOM on both request and response. The MTOM request will not have any impact on his application, apart from changing the SOAP mime-type, as far as I know.

Quagmire

Answer 3

Here is a reply I got on another forum. it basically says that the problem is with Axis2 on the Java side. Unfortunately, that is not under my control in this case.

cherry111 - Posted on Saturday, November 15, 2008 12:52:08 AM

You need change the configuration on your AXIS2 web service. You may know you can enable MTOM at two places. One is in service.xml and the other is in the axis.xml. Java recommends you set it in service.xml, but .net wse3.0 client does not like it. If you enable MTOM in axis.xml, it should work.

Admissive

Answer 4

Yes WCF has that mandated requirement and NO, because you can work around it like i did.

I wrote a MultiContentTypeMessageEncoder that encapsulates 3 different encoders text, mtom and fi. I also plan to encapsulate a gpb encoder if possible and if there is a good reason to do so, in the future

Iormina

Answer 5

[WSE 3.0] You can define a new class that inherits from your WSE3 proxy object with a single override method GetWebResponse.

In GetWebResponse method, you can simply choose if you want to use the mtom encoding according to the response's content-type.

After that, you have to use this proxy class instead of the generated one.

PS: The WSE3 proxy class have to be generated using wsewsdl3 as a WebClient (add this option /type:webClient to the commend line).

Reference: http://www.codeproject.com/Tips/46257/Solution-to-WSE-error-for-WSE-clients-needing.

Plutonian