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Authenticated HTTPRequests (Using Credentials)

Recently I had to make a SOAP call to a Cisco CallManager (an IP PBX). This required that the request used basic authentication. I couldn't add a web reference as the cisco interface doesn't support GET requests, so the Visual Studio discovery fails - even after authenticating.

It turns out that making a call to a webService is not too hard anyway and adding the credentials is just a single extra line of code, as shown in the sample below...

string axlrequest = "listPhoneByDescription";
string axlparameters = "<searchString>%Build%</searchString>";

HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://ccmivr/CCMApi/AXL/V1/soapisapi.dll");        
req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("myLogin", "myPwd"); //This line ensures the request is processed through Basic Authentication

req.ContentType = "text/xml";
req.Method = "POST";
req.Accept = "text/xml";

Stream s = req.GetRequestStream();

string soaprequest;
soaprequest = "<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema-instance\" xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema\">\n";
soaprequest += "<SOAP-ENV:Body>\n";
soaprequest += "<axl:" + axlrequest + " xmlns:axl=\"http://www.cisco.com/AXL/1.0\" xsi:schemaLocation=\"http://www.cisco.com/AXL/1.0 http://gkar.cisco.com/schema/axlsoap.xsd\" xsi:type=\"XRequest\" sequence=\"1234\">\n";
soaprequest += axlparameters + "\n";
soaprequest += "</axl:" + axlrequest + ">\n";
soaprequest += "</SOAP-ENV:Body>\n";
soaprequest += "</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>";

s.Write(System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(soaprequest),0,soaprequest.Length );

s.Close();

WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse();
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader (resp.GetResponseStream());
Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
Response.Write(sr.ReadToEnd()); //Just output XML response

This example uses the Cisco AXL interface to request a list of phones that match the description.

Author Dave Howard

I have been involved in IT development for the last 10 years - a lot of it around desktop applications and telecoms.

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