title: Automate test of web service communication
body: <p>I have an application that sends messages to an external web service. I build and deploy this application using <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wea2sca5(VS.80).aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MSBuild</a> and <a href="http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/Welcome+to+CruiseControl.NET" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cruisecontrol.NET</a>. As CCNET build and deploys the app it also runs a set of test using <a href="http://www.nunit.org/index.php" rel="nofollow noreferrer">NUnit</a>. I'd now like to test the web service communication as well. </p>
  
  <p>My idea is that as part of the build process a web service should be generated (based on the external web services WSDL) and deployed to the build servers local web server. All the web service should do is to receive the message and place it on the file system so I then can check it using ordinary NUnit for example. This would also make development easier as new developers would only have to run the build script and be up and running (not have to spend time to set up a connection to the third party service).  </p>
  
  <p>Are there any <strong>existing utilities out there</strong> that easily mock a web service based on a WSDL? Anyone <strong>done something similar using MSBuild?</strong> </p>
  
  <p>Are there <strong>other ways of testing this scenario?</strong> </p>