Accessing HTTP and REST-Based Services Directly

Some Web services can be accessed directly by Silverlight clients without going through a proxy. These services are described as HTTP-based services. They use human-readable metadata rather the machine-readable metadata that proxy-generation requires. HTTP-based services must be accessed directly using HTTP requests. The Silverlight control developer needs to be aware of the format and structure of the data returned. Some common formats include XML, JSON, and RSS or Atom. This section describes some of the convenient mechanisms for working with these data formats.

Other Web services describe their functionality using machine-readable metadata and are accessed through a proxy that is generated using a tool. For more information about using proxies, see Building and Accessing Services Using Proxies.

In This Section

How to: Make Requests to HTTP-Based Services: Describes how to make a direct request to an HTTP-based service. For more information about how to handle the returned data, see the following topics in this section.

Working with XML Data: Describes the options available to Silverlight applications for parsing XML data from an HTTP-based Web service.

Working with JSON Data: Describes the options available to Silverlight applications for parsing JSON data from an HTTP-based Web service.

Working with RSS or Atom Feeds: Describes how Silverlight can access RSS or Atom feeds.