Best SOAP tools for authenticated site

Question

I'm diving into the SharePoint SOAP WSDLs. I'm going to be writing an frontpage using AJAX for UI to collect some child sites and their underlying lists. This is on an authenticated site and I'm currently trying to use SoapUI/BurpSuite to generate my requests. SoapUI isn't quite descriptive enough, and BurpSuite is so cumbersome.

All I really need to do is make sure the requests return appropriately, but I'm spending way too much time spinning my wheels trying to get my setup working.

I'm wondering if there's a better way to go about this, specifically relating to which tools are best to use for developing for SharePoint WSDLs.

Answer 1

Use SPServices, a jQuery plugin that allows easy access to most of the (WCF) Services provided by SharePoint.

Answer 2

I'd like to suggest the following for your SharePoint development -

Examples of developing with the Client Object Model in Sharepoint 2010 (nice posts on the Client Object Model)

Getting started with the Client Object Model in Sharepoint 2010

JavaScript (ECMAScript) Class Library for SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model

ECMAScript Client Object Model (video)

Also check out this post from this forum - it also shows you don't need WSD/DISCO to work with SharePoint Web Services.