Creating Web Services In .NET To Return XML And JSON Data

Here we are going to learn how to create a web services in ASP.NET which will return data as XML and JSON.

 

Step 1: Create new project and select ASP.NET web Application.

 

 

Step 2: Select Empty template and click OK.

 

 

Step 3: Now add Web Service in project and give it name webservice1.asmx,

 

 

Step 4: Make sure you add the connection string in your web.config file as in the following screenshot,

 

 

Step 5: Now add the references System.data, System.Data.SqlClient and System.configuration,

 

 

Step 6: Create Employee table and run the following script in your SQL query editor,

/****** Object: Table [dbo].[Employee] Script Date: 09-12-2015 23:40:32 ******/
SET
ANSI_NULLS ON GO
SET
QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Employee](
[EmpId] [int] IDENTITY(1, 1) NOT NULL,
[EmpFirstName] [nvarchar](50) NULL,
[EmpLastName] [nvarchar](50) NULL,
[DeptId] [int] NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_Employee] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([EmpId] ASC) WITH (
PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF,
IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON,
ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON
) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY] GO

Now add the following method in your webservice1.asmx.cs file,

 [WebMethod]
public DataSet getEmp()
{
   string sql = "SELECT [EmpId],[EmpFirstName],[EmpLastName],[DeptId] FROM Employee";
   SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(sql, ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["Connection"].ToString());
   DataSet ds = new DataSet();
   da.Fill(ds);
   return ds;
}

Write a SQL query, create a SqlDataAdapter object and pass the SQL query and connection string.

 

Step 7: Save and run the services  by clicking F5 and invoking getEmp method as in the following,

 

 

Step 8 : Click on Invoke.

 

 

Step 9: It will return all the employees details in XML format.

 

Step 10 : Now for JSON return please add newtonsoft.json from the NuGet Manager. Go to Tools, then NuGet Package Manager and click on Package Manager console. 

 

 

Step 11: Write PM> Install-Package Newtonsoft.Json. It will add the reference Newtonsoft.Json in our project.

 

 

Step 12: It will display Success message as per the following screen, once you install the package.

 

 

Step 13: Now add the reference Newtonsoft.Json in your code.

 

 

Step 14: Create the method 'getEmployee' same as above method 'getEmp'. The only difference here is we use jsonConvert.SerializateIbject to serialize the data. 

 [WebMethod]
public string getEmployee()
{
   string sql = "SELECT [EmpId],[EmpFirstName],[EmpLastName],[DeptId] FROM Employee";
   SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(sql, ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["Connection"].ToString());
   DataSet ds = new DataSet();
   da.Fill(ds);
   return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(ds, Newtonsoft.Json.Formatting.Indented);
}

 

Step 15: Now run the service and invoke getEmployee method.

 

 

 

Step 16: It will return the same data but in JSON format.

 

Thanks for reading the article. Hope you like it.