Calling ASP.NET web service methods directly from a remote machine

Debugging a web service on my local machine is easy -- write the web service, publish it to my local machine, and then go to "http:\\localhost\webservice1\service1.asmx" to get a convenient prefab test form for entering simple data into the web service.

The prefab form is great for quick testing but unfortunately when you try and access it from a remote machine you get the message "The test form is only available for requests from the local machine."

There's a simple solution. Add these settings to the Web.Config file of the web service application:

<system.web>
<webServices>
<protocols>
<add name="HttpGet"/>
<add name="HttpPost"/>
</protocols>
</webServices>
</system.web>

This opens up a big security hole by letting remote users directly access the web service itself so you'd should naturally never do this in a production environment, but for quick-and-dirty testing it's quite useful.