Hi,

The issues that makes web service unsuitable in this case are purely
technical and related to what is allowed in a SOAP message.  Specifically:

1.  You can't insert a processing instruction for the style sheet into the
SOAP Body.  Nor is the processing instruction valid at the top of the XML
in the HTTP response since this would cause the XML processor to convert
the response to HTML - which would make most web service clients fail.

2.  You _could_ place the name of the style sheet in a SOAP header - e.g.
send back the URL of the style sheet to the caller and let them get it from
you at the location you provide.

Now, you can serve up regular files from the VROOT where your web service
lives.  Are you saying that if you say, put in a .txt file, and asked via
IE to get that specific file that ASP.net is refusing?  This is likely an
IIS setting.  Alternately you can put your style sheets in a regular VROOT
and make the SOAP headers that you return with the URL for each document
point to some web site of your choice where these style sheets live.

In short, SOAP isn't intended to be consumed directly by browser clients.

Dan

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Subject: RE: xml-stylesheets and web-service
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Thanks for the response Dan.

Couple of things ---

1) I did manage to "kludge" in the behaviour I wanted by creating a
WebMethod with the same name as the stylesheet file, and then just respond
with the file when invoked via the GET operation described. This is good
enough for now.

2) It's does not seem unresonable to expect the behaviour I'm looking for:
That is an xml web service responds with an xml file that the client can
either process as it sees fit, or use an author supplied stylesheet to
render
the xml in a "mindless" fashion. Certainly xml and stylesheets seem
designed
with this in mind. If this is not possible with ASP.NET WebServices, then
that seems more a reflection of MS's design/implementation, rather than a
"missuse" of XML Web Service intended use/design.

Again I appreciate your response.

Thanks,

"Dan Rogers" wrote:

Dan, thanks again for you response...

A number of items to clarify.

1) I've already worked out a solution to my particular problem, so our
discussion is now somewhat "academic"

2) My Web Service is only implemented wtih HTTP "POST" bindings, I'm not
using SOAP for the transactions.

3) This is my first forai into Web Service implementation so my
understanding of the issues is very basic

So to recap the problem I was having...

I return and XML document/stream with a processing instruction of the form,

<?xml-stylesheet href = 'StyleSheet.xsl' type = 'text/xsl'?>

the XML is sent back in response to a POST, so the brower receives the full
XML response, what happanes then is the IE comes back with a HTTP GET of the
form

GET /MyWS/MyWS.asmx/StyleSheet.xsl

(http://server-root//MyWS/MyWS.asmx/StyleSheet.xsl), since this is
referenced relative to the web-service asmx _file_, the GET fails

Again, I appreciate your time, and I do understand if this is too mundane
and issue for further response.

Regards,