Microsoft Ads 'AccountPerformanceReportRequest' data contract. The deserializer has no knowledge of any type that maps to this contract

Question

I'm trying to use the Microsoft Bing Ads' Reporting API to gather ad performance data such as clicks, spend, etc. programmatically. Below, I describe the steps taken.

There are two issues -

1 - I have to request for user consent again and again as access token is short lived and refreshed token also giving unauthenticated token error.
2 - After following the steps I don't get the expected SOAP Response. Instead I get below response.

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <s:Body>
        <s:Fault>
            <faultcode xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/net/2005/12/windowscommunicationfoundation/dispatcher">a:DeserializationFailed</faultcode>
            <faultstring>The formatter threw an exception while trying to deserialize the message: There was an error while trying to deserialize parameter https://bingads.microsoft.com/Reporting/v13:ReportRequest. The InnerException message was 'Error in line 13 position 71. Element 'https://bingads.microsoft.com/Reporting/v13:ReportRequest' contains data of the ':AccountPerformanceReportRequest' data contract. The deserializer has no knowledge of any type that maps to this contract. Add the type corresponding to 'AccountPerformanceReportRequest' to the list of known types - for example, by using the KnownTypeAttribute attribute or by adding it to the list of known types passed to DataContractSerializer.'.  Please see InnerException for more details.</faultstring>
        </s:Fault>
    </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

I'm using Postman to test the service and my end goal is to use http to do the same in Mulesoft later. This is the URL I am using

https://reporting.api.bingads.microsoft.com/Api/Advertiser/Reporting/V13/ReportingService.svc

Authentication

I have followed their OAuth 2.0 Authentication Flow in that, I have:

• Registered my Application (using the Developer Account)
• Requested user consent (through the Ad account)
• Generated the Access Token and Refresh Token Every time I hit the API.
• **

I generate a new Access Token by requesting user consent again and again as refreshing token is also not working.

**

Making the Request

The documentation describes a Reporting Service Operation which follows an asynchronous approach. First we need to use SubmitGenerateReport to make a request to the Reporting Service. This returns a ResponseRequestId which we can then use to repeatedly poll the service using PollGenerateReport till we get the requested report in response.

SubmitGenerateReport

SubmitGenerateReport has to be in SOAP XML Format as stated here. Following is the document I generated for my use case looking at the provided example in the documentation. Action I am passing as header attribute - SOAPAction:SubmitGenerateReport

<x:Envelope
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
        xmlns:v="https://bingads.microsoft.com/Reporting/v13"
        xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <x:Header>
        <v:AuthenticationToken>****</v:AuthenticationToken>
        <v:CustomerAccountId>****</v:CustomerAccountId>
        <v:CustomerId>****</v:CustomerId>
        <v:DeveloperToken>****</v:DeveloperToken>
    </x:Header>
    <x:Body>
        <v:SubmitGenerateReportRequest>
        <v:ReportRequest i:type="AccountPerformanceReportRequest">
            <v:Format>Csv</v:Format>
            <v:ReportName>AccountPerformanceReportRequest</v:ReportName>
            <v:Aggregation>Summary</v:Aggregation>
        </v:ReportRequest>
    </v:SubmitGenerateReportRequest>
    </x:Body>
</x:Envelope>

I even tried passing all the input variables, scope, time etc but getting some error again. I understand error clearly tells me where the error is but the report types I am using are given in Microsoft documentations.

Any help and suggestion would be really helpful.

Answer 1

1. I have to request for user consent again and again as access token is short lived and refreshed token also giving unauthenticated token error.

I would like to point you to these tutorial, as reference for my code below.

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/advertising/guides/get-started?view=bingads-13
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/advertising/guides/authentication-oauth-quick-start?view=bingads-13

In the first step, you fetch code, for this you need browser verification.

$clientId = '...'
Start-Process "https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/v2.0/authorize?client_id=$clientId&scope=openid%20profile%20https://ads.microsoft.com/msads.manage%20offline_access&response_type=code&redirect_uri=https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/nativeclient&state=ClientStateGoesHere&prompt=login"

$code = 'https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/nativeclient?code=<code>&state=ClientStateGoesHere'
$code = $code -match 'code=(.*)\&'
$code = $Matches[1]

Now, using this code, you get accessToken/refreshToken.

$response = Invoke-WebRequest https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/v2.0/token -ContentType application/x-www-form-urlencoded -Method POST -Body "client_id=$clientId&scope=https://ads.microsoft.com/msads.manage%20offline_access&code=$code&grant_type=authorization_code&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Flogin.microsoftonline.com%2Fcommon%2Foauth2%2Fnativeclient"

$oauthTokens = ($response.Content | ConvertFrom-Json)

Since, this access token $oauthTokens.access_token will expire after one hour, use the refresh token to get new access and refresh tokens. This process you need to do periodically, say on 1/2 hourly basis.

Process to refresh is the following. This does not require you to login.

$response = Invoke-WebRequest https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/v2.0/token -ContentType application/x-www-form-urlencoded -Method POST -Body "client_id=$clientId&scope=https://ads.microsoft.com/msads.manage%20offline_access&code=$code&grant_type=refresh_token&refresh_token=$($oauthTokens.refresh_token)"

$oauthTokens = ($response.Content | ConvertFrom-Json)  

PS, I'm unclear if we could refresh infinitely or whether it is bound to a day. I verified that an expired accessToken could be renewed via refreshToken via this method after 1.5 hours - no need of generating code again via relogin.

2. After following the steps I don't get the expected SOAP Response. Instead I get below response

Thank you for providing the detailed soap xmls. I tried the same on my test account and able to repro exact same error message.

Here's the udpated SOAP xml request I used to get it to work.

<s:Envelope xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <s:Header xmlns="https://bingads.microsoft.com/Reporting/v13">
    <AuthenticationToken i:nil="false">here goes token</AuthenticationToken>
    <CustomerAccountId i:nil="false">176045209</CustomerAccountId>
    <CustomerId i:nil="false">169549046</CustomerId>
    <DeveloperToken i:nil="false">here goes dev Token</DeveloperToken>
  </s:Header>
  <s:Body>
    <SubmitGenerateReportRequest xmlns="https://bingads.microsoft.com/Reporting/v13">
      <ReportRequest i:nil="false" i:type="AccountPerformanceReportRequest">
        <Format i:nil="false">Csv</Format>
        <ReportName i:nil="false">reportName1</ReportName>
        <!--These fields are applicable if the derived type attribute is set to AccountPerformanceReportRequest-->
        <Aggregation>Summary</Aggregation>
        <Columns i:nil="false">
          <AccountPerformanceReportColumn>Impressions</AccountPerformanceReportColumn>
          <AccountPerformanceReportColumn>Revenue</AccountPerformanceReportColumn>
          <AccountPerformanceReportColumn>AccountName</AccountPerformanceReportColumn>
        </Columns>
        <Scope i:nil="false">
          <AccountIds i:nil="false" xmlns:a1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays">
            <a1:long>176045209</a1:long>
          </AccountIds>
        </Scope>
        <Time i:nil="false">
          <CustomDateRangeEnd i:nil="false">
            <Day>22</Day>
            <Month>07</Month>
            <Year>2022</Year>
          </CustomDateRangeEnd>
          <CustomDateRangeStart i:nil="false">
            <Day>01</Day>
            <Month>07</Month>
            <Year>2022</Year>
          </CustomDateRangeStart>
        </Time>
      </ReportRequest>
    </SubmitGenerateReportRequest>
  </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

Here's the postman result.

PS, I received error, when some fields were missing. I did not use xml namespaces.

Hope this helps.