How to call an ASP.NET WebMethod using PowerShell? - asp.net

Question

It seems like ASP.NET WebMethods are not "web servicey" enough to work with New-WebServiceProxy. Or maybe it is, and I haven't figured out how to initialize it?
So instead, I tried doing it manually, like so:
$wc = new-object System.Net.WebClient
$wc.Credentials = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultCredentials
$url = "http://www.domenicdenicola.com/AboutMe/SleepLog/default.aspx/GetSpans"
$postData = "{`"starting`":`"\/Date(1254121200000)\/`",`"ending`":`"\/Date(1270018800000)\/`"}"
$result = $wc.UploadString($url, $postData)
But this gives me "The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error." So I must be doing something slightly wrong.
Any ideas on how to call my PageMethod from PowerShell, and not get an error?

Answer 1

Try the proxy approach again if indeed your are using a WebMethod. If so, the URL resource should have the extension .asmx but your's shows that you are using a standard ASP.NET page .aspx.
A proxy simplifies the use of a WebMethod quite a bit e.g.:
C:\PS>$URI = "http://www.webservicex.net/uszip.asmx?WSDL"
C:\PS> $zip = New-WebServiceProxy -uri $URI -na WebServiceProxy -class ZipClass
What sort of error are you getting when you try to use New-WebServiceProxy?

Answer 2

Domenic - I am not a big PowerShell user, but the salient issue here is:
"PageMethods" are ScriptMethods and do not expose a WSDL or any other discovery vector and as such you must POST with a content-type application/json with post data urlencoded e.g. starting=[.net datetime string urlencoded]&ending=..... JSON encoding the input is incorrect.
Try using (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create...... instead of WebClient, from which you would have to derive a class to enable changing the content type.
For instance, you could use something like this script and simply add a content type argument (or just hardcode it), something like this?
....
$req = [System.Net.HttpWebRequest]::Create($url);
$req.ContentType = "application/json";
$res = $req.GetResponse();
....