How to get clean/pure HTML from ASMX web service call

Question

I am trying to use jQuery .load() to get straight html from a asmx web service:

$('#target').load('MyService.asmx/GetHtml');

In .NET code, GetHtml() returns as string:

    [WebMethod(EnableSession = false)]
    [ScriptMethod(UseHttpGet = true, ResponseFormat = ResponseFormat.Xml)]
    public string GetHtml()
    {
        return "<span>Hi</span>";
    }

That returns:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<string xmlns="http://tempuri.org/"&gt;&amp;lt;span&amp;gt;Hi&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;/string&gt;

Notice that the string is encoded. With that encoding, $.load doesn't work right. The displayed text actually has the tags shown.

How can I get the WebMethod call to return just this?

<span>Hi</span>

Answer 1

How about this:

Instead of pulling HTML from the service, pull data, then use jquery to insert that data into the DOM.

Then you won't have to XML decode your HTML.

Answer 2

I'm pretty sure that if you want straight HTML back from a service, you would need to use a handler (.ashx) rather than .asmx. I don't know of a way to get .asmx not to encode your data in some format (though you can change what that format is.

That said, @Randolpho also has a good point.

Answer 3

The simplest way is to not use a web service at all. An HTTP request with a response containing HTML is basically the most common operation that happens on the web so the default tools are designed to do that. In the case of asp.net that would be an aspx file.

Answer 4

The short answer (as other posters have suggested) is: don't do that. Return JSON and use JS to craft it into the desired HTML. See this discussion for more details/comments.

However, if you have no choice but to return HTML (maybe your project mgr/architect is afraid of true webservice design, for some reason), I agree with Jake T's answer here: use ajax to call an ASPX page.

ASPX's whole purpose in life is to return HTML (unlike ASMX or ASHX). Most importantly, well-written ASPX separates the HTML from the logic/codebehind. That way, when you need to change the HTML from a list to a table (or whatever) you can do so without re-compiling, re-testing, and re-deploying the whole darn system! :)