Server did not recognize the value of HTTP Header SOAPAction initiate

Question

i have a simple web method. when i call it i get the below error.

Server did not recognize the value of HTTP Header SOAPAction initiate.

we call the webmethod from java client and we add the below code to the header.

addRequestHeader("SOAPAction", "initiate"); 

how to add it to the header in the server code (C#)?

Answer 1

I've decided to post my own answer here because I've lost a few hours on this and I think that, although the accepted answer of this other question (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/352174/server-did-not-recognize-the-value-of-http-header-soapaction/14084341#14084341) is very good and pointed me in the right direction (yes, it got a voteup), it was not detailed enough to explain what was wrong with my application, at least in my case.

I'm running a BPEL module in OpenESB 2.2 and the Test Case of my Composite Application was failing with the following error:

Caused by: System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException: Server did not recognize the value of HTTP Header SOAPAction: .

After doing some research I've noticed that the external WSDL has all the clues we need to fix this problem, eg, I'm using the following web service to validate a credit card number through a orchestration of Web Services: http://www.webservicex.net/CreditCard.asmx?WSDL

If you check the

<wsdl:binding name="CCCheckerSoap" type="tns:CCCheckerSoap">
  <soap:binding transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"/>
  <wsdl:operation name="ValidateCardNumber">
    <soap:operation soapAction="http://www.webservicex.net/ValidateCardNumber" style="document"/>
    <wsdl:input>
  <soap:body use="literal"/>
</wsdl:input>
...

But, once you create the Composite Application and build the project with the BPEL that invokes this external WSDL service, for some reason (bug?), the XML of the Composite Application Service Assembly (CASA) binding is generated with an empty soapAction parameter:

<binding name="casaBinding1" type="ns:CCCheckerSoap">
        <soap:binding style="document" transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"/>
        <operation name="ValidateCardNumber">
            <soap:operation soapAction="" style="document"/>
            <input>
                <soap:body use="literal"/>
            </input>

Once you copy the proper soapAction (http://www.webservicex.net/ValidateCardNumber) into this parameter, the application's Test Case will correctly and return the expected Soap response.

<soap:operation soapAction="http://www.webservicex.net/ValidateCardNumber" style="document"/>

So, it's a more specific solution that I decided to document based on the information found in this blog post: http://bluebones.net/2003/07/server-did-not-recognize-http-header-soapaction/ .

It means (at least in my case) that you are accessing a web service with SOAP and passing a SOAPAction parameter in the HTTP request that does not match what the service is expecting.