Invoke a WebService that needs Windows Authentication

1. December 2006 10:22 by Mrojas in General  //  Tags:   //   Comments (0)

Passing client credentials to a Web service using Windows authentication

Sometimes a Web Service is under a configuration that requires Windows Authentication. It is not a problem for .NET, all you need to do is set your environment to send the client credentials.
  1. First Create a Reference to a Web Service:





To do that just go to the references of your project and add a Web Reference. Type the URL of your web service. This will find your Web Service Reference and you can update it. This will generate the proxy code you need to access your webservice.

If you try to call your webservice with a call like:

WebReference.MyService pService = new WebReference.MyService ();
pService.doStuff("A", "B");

You’ll get a HTTP 404 forbidden access exception.

Now to send the user and password to call your service write some code like the following:

WebReference.MyService pService = new WebReference.MyService ();
pService.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("user", "password");
pService.doStuff("A", "B");

You can also send the domain name as part of the parameter to the NetworkCredential class:

pService.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("user", "password","domain");

It will be even better to have your user and password not in your code but in the configuration file for your program. You can then use the AppSettings class to access those properties.