InfoPath Dev

Can someone explain why you can't pass a parameter to a web service, as a secondary datasource, and have it return some data?

Since InfoPath can pass parameters (submit) to a web service and can get back data (in the form of a datasource) that it ought to be able to do both with the same secondary data connection. 

What's the reason??

The only workaround I can think of is to use one webservice to store the parameters as global variables in my webservice, and make different (submit) webservice which uses those variables. 

 Dave

If your web service takes parameters, they show up as query fields when you create a receive type secondary data connection to that web service. In your form, you can use rules on a field or a button to populate those query fields and then run the query -- which would return the data based on those parameters. Does your web service have parameters? Are you having a different experience when you create a secondary data connection to it?

Yes, it's working for me now.  I don't know why I couldn't get it to work in both directions yesterday.  Thank you for the reply, Hilary.

Dave

Hi Hilary,

 I am having a similar problem, I have a receive data connection that receives data from a web service method that requires an input parameter, which pulls data from a database. When I create the data connection, I set the value to a Username (pk) in the database. But I need this to be determined dynamically in the form (every employee has a unique username, so I am using set a default text box username() function, and I want to pass in that value as the parameter ). How do I do this?

 I saw that you mentioned using rules to do this, so I have tried to use the field that pulls userName(), and put a rule on it to set the queryField in my data connection to this fields value. but when I preview the form, I get this error: There is an error in XML document (1, 434). ---> System.FormatException: Input string was not in a correct format.

 This userName parameter is definitely a string throughout my web service, stored procedure, and table, and the text box in InfoPath is a string, so Im not sure why this happens. If I try to preview a new form with this only this data connection, and not even any text boxes, I get the same error when the form loads.

Any ideas? Thank for your help