Consume WCF Web Service using Objective-C on iPhone

I am having a hard time consuming a very simple (Hello World) WCF web service in my iPhone app. From what I have read, you must manually create the request message then send it to the web service URL.

I was able to accomplish this on a .asmx web service, but not with a WCF service.

How do I know the correct format of the request SOAP message?

The web service I am trying to hit has a format of: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:PORT/IService1/ (running locally in a VM)

I apologize for the lack of information, I am pretty lost.

Any and all help is much appreciated.

Thank to everyone that helped here. I ended up figuring it out and thought I would share my results. I know this is not a comprehensive solution, so shoot me a message or comment if you require more detail.

//Variables used
NSMutableData *webData;
NSMutableString *soapResults;
NSXMLParser *xmlParser;
BOOL recordResults;

//Web Service Call
NSString *soapMessage = [NSString stringWithFormat:
@"<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n"
"<SOAP-ENV:Envelope \n"
"xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\" \n"
"xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" \n" 
"xmlns:SOAP-ENC=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/\" \n"
"SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/\" \n"
"xmlns:SOAP-ENV=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\"> \n"
"<SOAP-ENV:Body> \n"
"<Login xmlns=\"http://tempuri.org/\"><username>JACKSON</username><password>PASSWORD</password>"
"</Login> \n"
"</SOAP-ENV:Body> \n"
"</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>"];

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://172.16.0.142:8731/Service1/"];               
NSMutableURLRequest *theRequest = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];             
NSString *msgLength = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", [soapMessage length]];          
[theRequest addValue: @"text/xml; charset=utf-8" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Type"];       
[theRequest addValue: @"http://tempuri.org/IService1/Login" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Soapaction"];
[theRequest addValue: msgLength forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Length"];
[theRequest setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];     
[theRequest setHTTPBody: [soapMessage dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
NSURLConnection *theConnection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:theRequest delegate:self];

if(theConnection) {
    webData = [[NSMutableData data] retain];
}
else {
    NSLog(@"theConnection is NULL");
}

//Implement the NSURL and XMLParser protocols
#pragma mark -
#pragma mark NSURLConnection methods

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didFailWithError:(NSError *)error

- (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark XMLParser methods

-(void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didStartElement:(NSString *)elementName 
 namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI 
qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName
   attributes:(NSDictionary *)attributeDict 

-(void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string

-(void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didEndElement:(NSString *)elementName 
 namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI 
qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName

Personally i would recommend adding a REST based endpoint for the WCF service. You can run it simultaneously with the SOAP and its a LOT easier to consume on the iPhone side.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd203052.aspx

What kind of error are you getting when you hit our WCF service? So asmx is working but not WCF? One thing you need to pay attention is that in .NET 2.0, the web services (asmx) supported both SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2 messages. However, basicHttpBinding in WCF handles only SOAP 1.1. So if you're sending SOAP 1.2 messages from your iPhone client to the WCF service with basicHttpBinding, this could very well be the problem you're having. In order to support SOAP 1.2, you need to use wsHttpBinding or create a custom binding pretty much the same as basicHttpBinding but you specify the message version to be SOAP 1.2.

<customBinding>
  <binding name="customHttpBindingWithSoap12">
     <textMessageEncoding messageVersion="Soap12"/>
     <httpTransport />              
  </binding>
</customBinding>   

Caged / httpriot Simple HTTP Rest Library for iPhone and Cocoa projects.