Receiving SOAP notifications from eBay api into AS

Question

I am trying to receive ebay api transaction notifications into an ASP hosted on a web server. The notifications are sent as SOAP messages and can be sent to a URL with a query string. Notifications must be responded to with HTTP 200 OK. I would like the notification to land inside a variable so that I can parse it and send it on to the next part of the system.

http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/guides/ebayfeatures/Notifications/Notifications.html#ReceivingPlatformNotifications

In the documentation they mention that this is possible, but the sample they give goes the route of subscribing to an email server. This ASP would not necessarily need to make SOAP requests, just accept SOAP messages from the ebay servers.

I am studying ASP, SOAP, and query strings, but a little guidance would be truly appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

This is what i have so far in my notifications.asp. When I try to send it a basic SOAP post through Postman nothing is happening. Does this look like it should work?

I tested this without the If statements checking for SOAP headers, and I posted just regular string data and it works. So the binary to string conversion and output to file is all good. Now I just need to test it with actual ebay api notifications. ;-)

<%
Function BytesToStr(bytes)
    Dim Stream
    Set Stream = Server.CreateObject("Adodb.Stream")
    Stream.Type = 1 'adTypeBinary
    Stream.Open
    Stream.Write bytes
    Stream.Position = 0
    Stream.Type = 2 'adTypeText
    Stream.Charset = "iso-8859-1"
    BytesToStr = Stream.ReadText
    Stream.Close
Set Stream = Nothing
End Function


Dim isPost: isPost = (UCase(Request.ServerVariables("REQUEST_METHOD") & "") = "POST")
Dim hasSoapAction

'Is it a HTTP POST?
If isPost Then
'Do we have a SOAPACTION header?
    hasSoapAction = (Len(Request.ServerVariables("HEADER_SOAPACTION") & "") > 0)
    If hasSoapAction Then
    'Process the notification here.
    'Use Request.BinaryRead to read the SOAP

        If Request.TotalBytes > 0 Then
            Dim lngBytesCount, text
            lngBytesCount = Request.TotalBytes
            text = BytesToStr(Request.BinaryRead(lngBytesCount))

            dim fs, tfile
            set fs=Server.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
            set tfile=fs.CreateTextFile("C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ASPtest\notifications.txt")
            tfile.WriteLine(text)
            tfile.Close
            set tfile=nothing
            set fs=nothing  
        End If  

    End If
    'Let eBay know we have received and processing the message.
    Response.Status = "200 OK"
Else
'Return method not allowed
Response.Status = "405 Method Not Allowed"
End If
Response.End
%>

Answer 2

This should be pretty straight forward, your Classic ASP page becomes the endpoint for the eBay Notification API (as long as you have configured it to send notifications and what URL to send them to).

You should be able to test this with a simple Classic ASP page

<%
Dim isPost: isPost = (UCase(Request.ServerVariables("REQUEST_METHOD") & "") = "POST")
Dim hasSoapAction

'Is it a HTTP POST?
If isPost Then
  'Do we have a SOAPACTION header (check both because 
  'it can be either HTTP_ or HEADER_ depending on IIS version)?
  hasSoapAction = ( _
    Len(Request.ServerVariables("HEADER_SOAPACTION") & "") > 0 Or _
    Len(Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_SOAPACTION") & "") > 0 _
  )
  If hasSoapAction Then
    'Process the notification here.
    'Use Request.BinaryRead to read the SOAP
  End If
  'Let eBay know we have received and processing the message.
  Response.Status = "200 OK"
Else
  'Return method not allowed
  Response.Status = "405 Method Not Allowed"
End If
Response.End
%>

You might also want to check REMOTE_HOST to make sure that you are only getting sent messages for the expected source (this isn't bulletproof though as the information can be spoofed).

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Useful Links

• Accessing a request's body (great existing answer that explains how to use Request.BinaryRead() to read the content and convert it to a string which you can then use in a variable or for parsing with XMLDocument.LoadXML()).

• How to generate MD5 using VBScript in classic ASP? (If you want to look at a way of verifying the MD5 signature)