Web service writers and readers serialize and deserialize, respectively, between the parameter or return objects of Web methods and the HTTP request or response streams. The System.Web.Services.Protocols.MimeFormatter class establishes a common interface and functionality for reader and writer classes, in both client and service-side .

The System.Web.Services.Protocols.MimeFormatter class supports the .NET Framework's implementations of Web services via the HTTP-GET and HTTP-POST operations. In HTTP-GET operations request parameters are encoded in the HTTP request's Uniform Resource Locator (URL). In HTTP-POST operations, request parameters are encoded in the HTTP request body, as with an HTML form. With both implementations, the return value appears in the HTTP response body as a non-SOAP XML document.

A developer typically does not need to directly use System.Web.Services.Protocols.MimeFormatter or its descendant classes. Instead, when the Wsdl.exe tool generates client proxy code according to the HTTP-GET or HTTP-POST implementations, it applies the System.Web.Services.Protocols.HttpMethodAttribute to each Web method and sets the attribute's HttpMethodAttribute.ParameterFormatter and HttpMethodAttribute.ReturnFormatter properties to the appropriate type derived from the System.Web.Services.Protocols.MimeFormatter class. On the server, the appropriate derived types are used according to settings in an ASP.NET configuration file (Web.config). On the client the appropriate derived types are determined from the WSDL.

Namespace: System.Web.Services.Protocols
Assembly: System.Web.Services (in System.Web.Services.dll)
Assembly Versions: 1.0.5000.0, 2.0.0.0