Querying a Web Service with InfoPath 2007

One of the things that I have found very useful with InfoPath 2007 is the ability to query web services for data. In one of my recent projects I was asked to have an employee enter their ID and return some specific information about them to be used in an InfoPath form. The group involved wanted to make sure that the name of the employee was the official name found in the HR database.

So, my first thought was, great, I'm going to have to create a custom web part or field type for SharePoint -- then I discovered that InfoPath has the capability of querying web services. This changed my game-plan significantly. So, without further explanation of the project, here are the steps taken to query a web service using InfoPath.

Step One - Create The InfoPath Form

I begin my process by laying out the required data-source elements. The group wants to return the official name of the employee based on their employee ID. So, I create my data-source with the following nodes:

I now add my fields to the InfoPath form using the Layout task-pane. For the purposes of this demonstration, I have removed the additional data elements.

Because I don’t want the employee changing the first name and last name fields, I am going to set these both to read-only. This is accomplished by right clicking on the field and choosing Text Box Properties. One the display tab, you’ll see the read-only checkbox.

Now that these items are ready only, I’m ready to move on to step two.

Step 2 – Create the data connections

From the menu, I choose Tools -> Data Connections.

I currently don’t have any data connections defined, so I will need to add my data connection. In this situation, I already have a web-service that connects to my HR database. I just need to connect InfoPath to the web service, so I click on Add.

In the dialog that appears, I choose to create a new connection to receive data.

In the list of options presented, I select from a web service. I am prompted to enter the URI for my web service or to use UDDI to locate a web service. After you have selected the web service, you will be presented with all of the available methods. For my example, I will be choosing the method to return an employee by id as XML data.

The next two screens present the available parameters and ask me to fill them out. The first screen is used to gather the schema of the returned data. The second is to create a default value. This method expects a single employee id formatted as an integer. In my situation, I set both of these to my employee ID (mainly because it’s the only one I know from memory).

Now I’m asked by InfoPath if I want to store a copy of the data in the template. This will be based upon your situation, so I have no recommendation. Since I’m returning a single record, it almost seems pointless to store the record with this template, so I have chosen not to store any data.

Finally, you’re asked for a name and if you want to automatically retrieve data when the form is opened. Set these values and click Finish. I have now created my data connection to retrieve employee information. You should be able to change your data source on the data source task pain to explore the returned schema.

Step Three – Linking Everything Together with Rules

Now that I have successfully connected to my web service, I need to create a rule that will populate the name based on the employee ID typed into the employee ID field. Begin by right clicking on the Employee ID field and choosing Rules.

The trick to getting this to work is to use the Employee ID field to pass the required parameter to the web service and re-querying the web-service with the new parameter. So, I need to create a new rule that will take care of this functionality for me. From the rules dialog, I click on Add. To help me clarify the rule later, I call this rule Set Employee Name.

I create a new action to set a field’s value. This is where some of the magic will happen. For the field, I click on the Browse Icon and select my web service from the data source drop down. You should see query fields and data fields as nodes in the tree. Open the query fields until you find your parameter. Click on the parameter and click OK to set this value.

For the value, I set this to the current node by selecting the function icon and choosing to insert a field or group. Make sure your main data source is selected and choose the appropriate field. In my case, this is the employee ID field. Once these bindings are done, I click OK.

I now need to add an action to query the web service, so I click on Add Action and choose Query using a data connection in the action drop down. Since I only have one data source, I choose the only available data source and click OK.

Now, the final step is to add an action to set the fields of my main data source to the retrieved values from the web service. I click on Add Action and choose the action to Set a field’s value.

This time, the field will be FirstName from the main data source and the value will be the associated value from the web service. I add one more action to set the last name. Now I’m ready to test it out to make sure it works as expected, so I click OK until I am back to the main form. I now click on preview and test the form to make sure it is able to retrieve the name from the web service and populate my read-only text boxes.

When I enter my employee ID, I find that my name is automatically populated back into the form.