web reference - help me understand this ...

Hi all,
I need to add the FedEx address validation web service to my VB app. OK, so I have their sample application (happened to be written in VB 2005, but no problem, it converted up to VB 2010 with no issues). After putting in the supplied test keys, etc., their sample application ran fine, validated the test addresses etc. Great ...

So then I go to my app and proceed to try and add the web service. This is when I realize that the existing FedEx sample app refers to "C:\wsdldirectory\AddressValidationService_v3.wsdl" and there is no such directory / file on my system, so I can't add the reference. Furthermore, I have no idea where the sample app is pulling this wsdl from. (If I remove the reference from the sample app, I get all kinds of errors as I would expect, meaning the sample app is pulling the reference from "somewhere".)

So the questions are: where is the sample app pulling the wsdl reference from, and how do I reference it in my app?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BruceG

Hi all,
I need to add the FedEx address validation web service to my VB app. OK, so I have their sample application (happened to be written in VB 2005, but no problem, it converted up to VB 2010 with no issues). After putting in the supplied test keys, etc., their sample application ran fine, validated the test addresses etc. Great ...

So then I go to my app and proceed to try and add the web service. This is when I realize that the existing FedEx sample app refers to "C:\wsdldirectory\AddressValidationService_v3.wsdl" and there is no such directory / file on my system, so I can't add the reference. Furthermore, I have no idea where the sample app is pulling this wsdl from. (If I remove the reference from the sample app, I get all kinds of errors as I would expect, meaning the sample app is pulling the reference from "somewhere".)

So the questions are: where is the sample app pulling the wsdl reference from, and how do I reference it in my app?

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Ok, so for your app you need to get the WSDL for address validation service. I followed the directions according to something I found at FedEx (I don't recall). Here are the steps: Go to the FedEx developer page:

https://www.fedex.com/us/developer/w...=tab1#app-tab2

Scroll down to where it says "Downloads". Select "Advanced Services", and click the "General" Tab. Now on the tab, it should say "Download WSDL or XSD". Click "WSDL". You should now have the AddressValidationServiceWSDL_v2014 zip file downloaded. Extract the contents of the ZIP into a folder, and copy the path to the WSDL file. Now in VS, click "Project" from the menu at the top and select "Add Service Reference". Click "Advanced", at the bottom and select "Add Web Reference". In the URL box put the path to the wsdl such as

Code:

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"C:\Users\jayinthe813\Desktop\AddressValidationServiceWSDL_v2014\AddressValidationService_v3.wsdl"

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and hit the green arrow. Once it finds the reference, supply the name (other than default) and select "Add Reference".

This is just based on the documentation I found at the time, I think you may be able to just add it under "Service Reference" (as typical web references seem to be "deprecated"), but I followed the documentation that was given to me at the time and the shipping works perfectly.

There's probably a different way, though what Jay showed is viable. Generally, with a SOAP service, you can right click on the project and add a Service Reference. With that, you enter the URL and hit some button like Discover, or OK, or something, and it downloads all the wsdl files. SOAP is fairly well deprecated, though, so I would say that whatever approach works is just fine.