http solicit-response

Hi guys

I am building a BTS app that needs to use a solicit-response mechanism to send HTTP commands out to a server and capture its XML response.

Unfortunately I am a complete HTTP n00b and am not sure quite what to do. I had built some stuff already and had confidently assumed it would work but it didn’t (I got some 405 method not allowed message). Could you help?

What I essentially need to do is send an http://myserver.com?app=abc&cmd=xyz (value-pair) type command out to a server that may be over the intra- or internet and receive a response in the form of an XML-format ADO recordset. If I issue this command over IE I see the response I expect to capture in BTS. The actual server URI is variable so I am defining the solicit-response port as Dynamic and setting the server address at runtime.

The way I attempted to approach the problem was as follows:

On the send side, I defined a schema to represent the various bits I need (uri, app, cmd as in example above) in XML form and then define a flat file extension for it to turn it into the appropriately-delimited string. The send port runs over a pipeline that uses the Flat File assembler component. At runtime, the BTS orchestration builds an XML message that conforms to the schema I defined; I strip the uri out of the message and assign it to the send port address, and then post the message remnant to the send port: the Flat File component turns it into the appropriate string and the string should then get posted to the desired address. I have tested this by sending to a file rather than http port and the http string is what I would expect to see. Do I need to implement URI encoding myself using a custom pipeline that I’d slot in after the Flat File one has run, or should the http send port manage this my itself? I had assumed the latter…

On the receive side, I have built a pipeline component to capture the returned XML ADO Recordset and turn it into a more recognisable schema that I have declared in BTS. The http receive port runs over a pipeline that uses this component. I have tested this by using the pipeline on a file-based receive port and it seems to work ok.

However, I strongly suspect this is not the way I am supposed to be doing it!

It could be that this method is ok but that something else is causing the 405 error: I have set up the BTS http receive extension (though it was already there for hws anyway), but I reckon the problem is on the send rather than the receive side, and my knowledge of IIS and SharePoint is so shallow that I do not know what to do next.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!

Thanks and best regards

Bob