Use ArcGIS Server REST geoprocessing service from the client without ArcGIS Web API's or ArcObjects

Question

I'm checking to see if anyone knows how to execute and read the response from a custom Geoprocessor published on an ArcGIS Server as a REST web service without the use of ArcObjects or an ArcGIS web API on the client side.

I've built a custom geoprocessor service and successfully published it to ArcGIS server as a web service. The service takes standard .Net objects as inputs and returns the same as outputs so there is no need for any ArcObjects on the client side. I simply want to execute the REST web service by using standard .Net tools like System.Net.HttpWebRequest and System.Net.HttpWebResponse classes similar to what is shown here.

I've used the ArcGIS Server services with ArcGIS Web API's in the past, but doing it this way is new to me.

Answer 1

You're going to want to refer to the ArcGIS REST API docs to see how to make your requests. This would also apply to your custom geoprocessing service.

I basically do just pass the request through WebRequest in .NET and do any tweaking as needed. A simple version may look something like this.

public object Get(string name)
{
    string query = "where=NAME LIKE '%" + name.ToUpper() + "%'&outFields=*&returnGeometry=false&returnDistinctValues=true&f=json";
    var request = WebRequest.Create(serviceURL + query);
    request.ContentType = "application/json";
    request.Method = "GET";
    var response = request.GetResponse();
    var stream = new System.IO.StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
    var o = Json.Decode(stream.ReadToEnd());
    response.Close();
    return o;
}

Once you have the request, you can parse the results into your own objects if you want and work with them from there.