From: Justin Rudd <justin.rudd@...>
Date: 2004-09-22T16:05:30+09:00
Subject: Re: soap4r. I just dont get it.

> By the way, why do I need WSDL? What does it mean that I need WSDL? I
> thought all web services would have some form of WSDL isnt it? Anyway, I
> can read the WSDL from the internet explorer. Is that enough?

Without going into a lot of detail, the WSDL is the contract.  It
describes services (objects) and ports (methods).  The ports are what
you send across the wire.

Given the WSDL, you can feed it into WSDL4R (or maybe even at runtime)
and get Ruby code that will "do the right thing" on the wire including
element names.  My guess is your ASMX file (or the code-behind) has a
method like so (can't infer the return type from what you posted) -

GetData(int DataID, string[] inputstring)

If you are validating that there are elements in inputstring, the way
you are sending them (and the first answer you received) won't work
because you need to pass in the array of items.  And ASP.NET is very
specific in what it is looking for.  It will be looking for the
fragment -

<inputstring>
   <string>foo</string>
   <string>bar</string>
</inputstring>

Anything else will be ignored, but it won't raise an error.  Also XML
is case sensitive, make sure the element names going from Ruby to
ASP.NET are spelled correctly including case.  I know I've made that
mistake many, many times.

I can't really comment much more because I've not worked with SOAP4R. 
I can answer whatever issues you have with ASP.NET though.  I've
learned over the years to bend it to my will :)

-- 
Justin Rudd
http://seagecko.org/thoughts/