400 Bad error using Sharepoint web services

Question

I am getting a 400 HTTP error while attempting to use the Sharepoint Query Web Service. My rationale is that this is largely due to a malformed XML which I am unable to wrap my head around as to why:

This is the SOAP request body, can anybody think what is wrong in this ?

<?xml version="1.0" ?><S:Envelope xmlns:S="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <S:Body>
    <Query xmlns="urn:Microsoft.Search">
      <queryXml>"
        <QueryPacket xmlns='urn:Microsoft.Search.Query' Revision='1000'>
          <Query>
            <Context>
              <QueryText language='en-US' type='STRING'>
                Word
              </QueryText>
            </Context>
          </Query>
        </QueryPacket>"
      </queryXml>
    </Query>
  </S:Body>
</S:Envelope>

As shown, the `"..."` is invalid. I'm assuming the value of the `queryXml` node should be text? You either need a CDATA wrapper around that value or you need it encoded. — Cᴏʀʏ, Sep 12 '12 at 21:48
It is supposed to be a string, the string however is XML...this can be referenced from : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms573544.aspx Can you elaborate a little further on CDATA wrapper ? — user1020069, Sep 12 '12 at 21:56

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 12 '12 at 22:32

The XML is indeed malformed, probably because whatever is parsing it is seeing quotations in between two starting or ending tags, which is illegal.

There are two approaches you could attempt:

Wrap the <queryXml> content with CDATA tags:
```
<queryXml><![CDATA[<QueryPacket>...</QueryPacket>]]></queryXml>
```
Notice that the quotations are gone here; you can put them back if you really need them (though I'm not sure what there purpose would be):
```
<queryXml><![CDATA["<QueryPacket>...</QueryPacket>"]]></queryXml>
```
Encode the content so it's not treated as XML:
```
<queryXml>&lt;QueryPacket&gt;...&lt;/QueryPacket&gt;</queryXml>
```
There are several ways of accomplishing the encoding. I'll leave that as an exercise for you, since I don't know how you are building your SOAP request.

thanks, I figured why CDATA was required, and basically saw your answer later, which is correct :) — user1020069, Sep 13 '12 at 00:12

400 Bad error using Sharepoint web services

1 Answers1