SOAP support

If you want to support SOAP, you have to ensure you adhere to some additional constraints where each method needs to be defined with the Any() endpoint and each DTO needs to be decorated with [DataContract] and [DataMember] attributes so their metadata is generated in your Services XSD and WSDL metadata.

SOAP + REST

SOAP only supports a single POST request but REST services also make use of GET, PUT, DELETE, etc requests, which aren't used in SOAP. So if you want to support SOAP and REST, you need to create one service for each operation which is also the recommended API structure for creating message-based Services. The difference to be able to support SOAP is that Service implementations need to be defined with Any(), e.g:

//Request DTO - Add DataMember attribute for all properties.
[DataContract]
[Route("/customers", "GET")]
[Route("/customers/{Id}", "GET")]
public class GetCustomers {...}

[DataContract]
[Route("/customers", "POST")]
public class AddCustomer {...}

[DataContract]
[Route("/customers/{Id}", "PUT")]
public class UpdateCustomer {...}

[DataContract]
[Route("/customers/{Id}", "DELETE")]
public class DeleteCustomer {...}

//Service
public class CustomersService : Service 
{
   public object Any(GetCustomers request){...}
   public object Any(AddCustomer request){...}
   public object Any(UpdateCustomer request){...}
   public object Any(DeleteCustomer  request){...}
}

Using Any will allow the Service to be executed on each HTTP Verb which is required for SOAP since all SOAP Requests are made with a HTTP POST Request wrapped inside a SOAP message and sent to the fixed /soap11 or /soap12 endpoints. You also want to make sure that all DTO models have [DataContract] attribute (and [DataMember] attribute for all properties) otherwise the XSD-schema embedded within the WSDL will be partially incomplete.

REST-ful registration of multiple services

The Custom [Route] definitions are used to control how you want services exposed in REST APIs which all logically appear to exposed them under a single REST-ful resource, i.e:

GET /customers    - Get All Customers
GET /customers/1  - Get Customer #1
POST /customers   - Add New Customer
PUT /customers/1  - Update Customer #1 
DELETE /customers - Delete Customer #1

This Web Service now supports both REST and SOAP with REST API's using the above custom routes and SOAP requests posting WSDL Requests to their fixed /soap11 or /soap12 endpoints.

SOAP Limitations

SOAP expects that each request always returns the same response DTO. So you need to follow the Response DTO naming convention, otherwise ServiceStack won't be able to generate the WSDLs and the SOAP endpoint won't be able to work.

DTO Naming Conventions

Naming convention: {Request DTO Name} + Response

Example: Request DTO: DeleteCustomer --> Response DTO: DeleteCustomerResponse.

If you would leave the services as they are, the REST endpoint wouldn't exist. So you need to hook them all up on the same URL like that:

Single WSDL Namespace

If you happen to generate requests from the WSDLs with a tool like SoapUI you may end up with an incorrectly generated request like this:

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" 
               xmlns:type="http://schemas.servicestack.net/types">
  <soap:Header/>
  <soap:Body>
    <type:Hello/>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

You can resolve this issue by adding the following line to your AssemblyInfo file

[assembly: ContractNamespace("http://schemas.servicestack.net/types", 
           ClrNamespace = "<YOUR NAMESPACE>")]

e.g:

[assembly: ContractNamespace("http://schemas.servicestack.net/types",
           ClrNamespace = "MyApp.ServiceModel")]
[assembly: ContractNamespace("http://schemas.servicestack.net/types",
           ClrNamespace = "MyApp.ServiceModel.Types")]

Rebuild and regenerate the request from the updated wsdl. You should get a correct request this time.

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" 
               xmlns:type="http://schemas.servicestack.net/types">
   <soap:Header/>
   <soap:Body>
      <type:Hello>
         <!--Optional:-->
         <type:Name>?</type:Name>
      </type:Hello>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Changing the default namespace

A requirement with SOAP endpoints is for all DTO types to share the same single namespace which should match the Config.WsdlServiceNamespace if you want to change it from the default namespace: http://schemas.servicestack.net/types. E.g. You can change the default WSDL Namespace in your AppConfig with:

SetConfig(new HostConfig {
    WsdlServiceNamespace = "http://my.new.namespace.com/types",
});

This can easily be done by using the [assembly:ContractNamespace] attribute usually defined in the DTO project's AssemblyInfo.cs file, here is how this is done in the ServiceStack.Examples project:

[assembly: ContractNamespace("http://my.new.namespace.com/types",
           ClrNamespace = "ServiceStack.Examples.ServiceModel.Operations")]
[assembly: ContractNamespace("http://my.new.namespace.com/types",
           ClrNamespace = "ServiceStack.Examples.ServiceModel.Types")]

SOAP Exceptions

Exceptions in SOAP responses are returned with an 200 OK HTTP Status so they are deserialized as normal responses in code-generated SOAP clients. The original HTTP Status code is available in the X-Status HTTP Header or SOAP Response Header named X-Status. This is transparently converted into a typed WebServiceException when using ServiceStack's built-in Soap 1.1/1.2 generic Service Clients as seen in WebServicesTests.

To check if the response was an error in non ServiceStack SOAP clients, check the response.ResponseStatus.ErrorCode property for a non-null value.

Convert SOAP Exceptions to SOAP Faults

If preferred, you can also convert SOAP Exceptions into a SOAP Fault by adding a ServiceExceptionHandler, e.g:

ServiceExceptionHandlers.Add((req, request, ex) => {
    var requestMsg = req.GetItem("SoapMessage") as System.ServiceModel.Channels.Message;
    if (requestMsg != null)
    {
        var msgVersion = requestMsg.Version;
        using (var response = XmlWriter.Create(req.Response.OutputStream))
        {
            var message = System.ServiceModel.Channels.Message.CreateMessage(
                msgVersion, new FaultCode("Receiver"), ex.ToString(), null);
            message.WriteMessage(response);
        }
        req.Response.End();
    }
    return null;
});

Customize WSDL's and XSD's

There's finer-grain control available over which Operations and Types are exported in SOAP WSDL's and XSD's by overriding the new ExportSoapOperationTypes() and ExportSoapType() methods in your AppHost.

You can exclude specific Request DTO's from being emitted in WSDL's and XSD's with:

[Exclude(Feature.Soap)]
public class HiddenFromSoap { .. } 

Raw Access to WCF SOAP Message

IRequiresSoapMessage works similar to IRequiresRequestStream interface to tell ServiceStack to skip de-serialization of the request and instead pass the raw WCF Message to the Service instead for manual processing, e.g:

public class RawWcfMessage : IRequiresSoapMessage {
	public Message Message { get; set; }
}

public object Post(RawWcfMessage request) { 
	request.Message... //Raw WCF SOAP Message
}

Customize SOAP Response

You can override and customize how the SOAP Message Responses are written, here's a basic example:

public override WriteSoapMessage(Message message, Stream outputStream)
{
    using (var writer = XmlWriter.Create(outputStream, Config.XmlWriterSettings))
    {
        message.WriteMessage(writer);
    }
}

The default WriteSoapMessage implementation also raises a ServiceException and writes any returned response to a buffered Response Stream (if configured).

Visual Studios Add Service Reference

Since VS.NET's Add Service Reference is optimized for consuming .asmx or WCF RPC method calls it doesn't properly support multiple return values (e.g. when you also want a ResponseStatus property) where it will generate an ugly proxy API complete with out parameters.

If you want to ensure a pretty proxy is generated you should only have 1 first-level property which contains all the data you want to return.

Using XSD.exe

One way around it is to share your services DTO's and use any of the typed Generic Service Clients that are in-built into ServiceStack. Alternatively you can use the XSD.exe command-line utility to generate your types on the client and use those in the typed Service Clients.