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I'm relative new to the webservices world and my research seems to have confused me more than enlighten me, my problem is that I was given a library(jar) which I have to extend with some webservice functionality.

This library will be shared to other developers, and among the classes in the jar will be classes that have a method which calls a webservice (that essentially sets an attribute of the class, does some business logic, like storing the object in a db, etc and sends back the object with those modifications). I want to make the call to this service as simple as possible, hopefully as simple so that the developer using the class only need to do.

Car c = new Car("Blue"); c.webmethod();

I have been studying JAX-WS to use on the server but seems to me that I don't need to create a wsimport in the server nor the wsimport on the client, since I know that both have the classes, I just need some interaction between classes shared in both the server and the client. How do you think makes sense to do the webservice and the call in the class?

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  • Your question is a bit unclear. The method you want to create will (1) get the object from the web service; (2) work with the object a little; and (3) post it back to the web service. Is that it? Commented Apr 11, 2013 at 3:36
  • No, the object will be created in the client, it will be sent to the ws in the call, the ws will set a variable, for example currentTime, do some business logic like to store it in a db, and then sent the object back to the client with the currentTime now set. Hope I explained my self a little better. Thank you. Commented Apr 11, 2013 at 4:57

4 Answers 4

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I understand your problem boils down to how to call a SOAP (JAX-WS) web service from Java and get its returning object. In that case, you have two possible approaches:

  1. Generate the Java classes through wsimport and use them; or
  2. Create a SOAP client that:
    1. Serializes the service's parameters to XML;
    2. Calls the web method through HTTP manipulation; and
    3. Parse the returning XML response back into an object.


About the first approach (using wsimport):

I see you already have the services' (entities or other) business classes, and it's a fact that the wsimport generates a whole new set of classes (that are somehow duplicates of the classes you already have).

I'm afraid, though, in this scenario, you can only either:

  • Adapt (edit) the wsimport generated code to make it use your business classes (this is difficult and somehow not worth it - bear in mind everytime the WSDL changes, you'll have to regenerate and readapt the code); or
  • Give up and use the wsimport generated classes. (In this solution, you business code could "use" the generated classes as a service from another architectural layer.)

About the second approach (create your custom SOAP client):

In order to implement the second approach, you'll have to:

  1. Make the call:
    • Use the SAAJ (SOAP with Attachments API for Java) framework (see below, it's shipped with Java SE 1.6 or above) to make the calls; or
    • You can also do it through java.net.HttpUrlconnection (and some java.io handling).
  2. Turn the objects into and back from XML:
    • Use an OXM (Object to XML Mapping) framework such as JAXB to serialize/deserialize the XML from/into objects
    • Or, if you must, manually create/parse the XML (this can be the best solution if the received object is only a little bit differente from the sent one).

Creating a SOAP client using classic java.net.HttpUrlConnection is not that hard (but not that simple either), and you can find in this link a very good starting code.

I recommend you use the SAAJ framework:

SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ) is mainly used for dealing directly with SOAP Request/Response messages which happens behind the scenes in any Web Service API. It allows the developers to directly send and receive soap messages instead of using JAX-WS.

See below a working example (run it!) of a SOAP web service call using SAAJ. It calls this web service.

import javax.xml.soap.*; public class SOAPClientSAAJ { // SAAJ - SOAP Client Testing public static void main(String args[]) { /* The example below requests from the Web Service at: https://www.w3schools.com/xml/tempconvert.asmx?op=CelsiusToFahrenheit To call other WS, change the parameters below, which are: - the SOAP Endpoint URL (that is, where the service is responding from) - the SOAP Action Also change the contents of the method createSoapEnvelope() in this class. It constructs the inner part of the SOAP envelope that is actually sent. */ String soapEndpointUrl = "https://www.w3schools.com/xml/tempconvert.asmx"; String soapAction = "https://www.w3schools.com/xml/CelsiusToFahrenheit"; callSoapWebService(soapEndpointUrl, soapAction); } private static void createSoapEnvelope(SOAPMessage soapMessage) throws SOAPException { SOAPPart soapPart = soapMessage.getSOAPPart(); String myNamespace = "myNamespace"; String myNamespaceURI = "https://www.w3schools.com/xml/"; // SOAP Envelope SOAPEnvelope envelope = soapPart.getEnvelope(); envelope.addNamespaceDeclaration(myNamespace, myNamespaceURI); /* Constructed SOAP Request Message: <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:myNamespace="https://www.w3schools.com/xml/"> <SOAP-ENV:Header/> <SOAP-ENV:Body> <myNamespace:CelsiusToFahrenheit> <myNamespace:Celsius>100</myNamespace:Celsius> </myNamespace:CelsiusToFahrenheit> </SOAP-ENV:Body> </SOAP-ENV:Envelope> */ // SOAP Body SOAPBody soapBody = envelope.getBody(); SOAPElement soapBodyElem = soapBody.addChildElement("CelsiusToFahrenheit", myNamespace); SOAPElement soapBodyElem1 = soapBodyElem.addChildElement("Celsius", myNamespace); soapBodyElem1.addTextNode("100"); } private static void callSoapWebService(String soapEndpointUrl, String soapAction) { try { // Create SOAP Connection SOAPConnectionFactory soapConnectionFactory = SOAPConnectionFactory.newInstance(); SOAPConnection soapConnection = soapConnectionFactory.createConnection(); // Send SOAP Message to SOAP Server SOAPMessage soapResponse = soapConnection.call(createSOAPRequest(soapAction), soapEndpointUrl); // Print the SOAP Response System.out.println("Response SOAP Message:"); soapResponse.writeTo(System.out); System.out.println(); soapConnection.close(); } catch (Exception e) { System.err.println("\nError occurred while sending SOAP Request to Server!\nMake sure you have the correct endpoint URL and SOAPAction!\n"); e.printStackTrace(); } } private static SOAPMessage createSOAPRequest(String soapAction) throws Exception { MessageFactory messageFactory = MessageFactory.newInstance(); SOAPMessage soapMessage = messageFactory.createMessage(); createSoapEnvelope(soapMessage); MimeHeaders headers = soapMessage.getMimeHeaders(); headers.addHeader("SOAPAction", soapAction); soapMessage.saveChanges(); /* Print the request message, just for debugging purposes */ System.out.println("Request SOAP Message:"); soapMessage.writeTo(System.out); System.out.println("\n"); return soapMessage; } }

About using JAXB for serializing/deserializing, it is very easy to find information about it. You can start here: http://www.mkyong.com/java/jaxb-hello-world-example/.

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12 Comments

How do I set soap version using the method mentioned above?
I was able to use your method and it worked when I used your URI but for my own SOAP request I get a response whereby none of the values are shown as expected, i.e. <xsd:element name="Incident_Number" type="xsd:string"/>. As you can see, the element is closed and no information is generated from the WS.
To the passer-by: If the code above (the example SOAP Web Service endpoint) stops working or starts giving erros (like 500, 503, etc), please let me know so I can fix it.
How can I add another node (AuthHeader) in the same request in header containing username and password? For example:<soap:Header> <x:AuthHeader> <x:Username>userabc</x:Username> <x:Password>pass123</x:Password> </x:AuthHeader> </soap:Header>
Also, I have the same question of Ronaldo F. If web service that is being called needs authentication (username and password). It means web service is a secure web service. How can I call such SOAP web service using SAAJ. Please write a program for calling such a soap web service.
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Might help for someone who have xml request as string. if you have WSDL, You can create a new soap request in SoapUI with that WSDL file.
It would automatically generate the Structure/XML for input request.

Here is some simple version of Java code you can use to call Soap service if you have the input request xml from SoapUI:

import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.DataOutputStream; import java.io.FileInputStream; import java.io.FileNotFoundException; import java.io.FileOutputStream; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.net.HttpURLConnection; import java.net.URL; public class SimpleSoapClient { public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException { String address="Hyderabad"; /* place your xml request from soap ui below with necessary changes in parameters*/ String xml="<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:ws=\"http://www.YourUrlAsPerWsdl.com/\">\r\n" + " <soapenv:Header/>\r\n" + " <soapenv:Body>\r\n" + " <ws:callRest>\r\n" + " <name>"+"Hello"+"</name>\r\n" + " <address>"+address+"</address>\r\n" + " </ws:callRest>\r\n" + " </soapenv:Body>\r\n" + "</soapenv:Envelope>"; String responseF=callSoapService(xml); System.out.println(responseF); } } static String callSoapService(String soapRequest) { try { String url = "https://gogle.com/service/hello"; // replace your URL here URL obj = new URL(url); HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) obj.openConnection(); // change these values as per soapui request on top left of request, click on RAW, you will find all the headers con.setRequestMethod("POST"); con.setRequestProperty("Content-Type","text/xml; charset=utf-8"); con.setDoOutput(true); DataOutputStream wr = new DataOutputStream(con.getOutputStream()); wr.writeBytes(soapRequest); wr.flush(); wr.close(); String responseStatus = con.getResponseMessage(); System.out.println(responseStatus); BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader( con.getInputStream())); String inputLine; StringBuffer response = new StringBuffer(); while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) { response.append(inputLine); } in.close(); // You can play with response which is available as string now: String finalvalue= response.toString(); // or you can parse/substring the required tag from response as below based your response code finalvalue= finalvalue.substring(finalvalue.indexOf("<response>")+10,finalvalue.indexOf("</response>")); */ return finalvalue; } catch (Exception e) { return e.getMessage(); } }

}

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2 Comments

Finally I found an example that really works... thank you so much!
The response can be sometimes unreadable in that case check the Content-Encoding header of the HTTP response. If it is gzip compression, the inputStream can be wrapped in a GZIPInputStream for decompression and if it is deflate, you can wrap it in an InflaterInputStream
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Or just use Apache CXF's wsdl2java to generate objects you can use.

It is included in the binary package you can download from their website. You can simply run a command like this:

$ ./wsdl2java -p com.mynamespace.for.the.api.objects -autoNameResolution http://www.someurl.com/DefaultWebService?wsdl

It uses the wsdl to generate objects, which you can use like this (object names are also grabbed from the wsdl, so yours will be different a little):

DefaultWebService defaultWebService = new DefaultWebService(); String res = defaultWebService.getDefaultWebServiceHttpSoap11Endpoint().login("webservice","dadsadasdasd"); System.out.println(res);

There is even a Maven plug-in which generates the sources: https://cxf.apache.org/docs/maven-cxf-codegen-plugin-wsdl-to-java.html

Note: If you generate sources using CXF and IDEA, you might want to look at this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/46812593/840315

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I have 30+ wsdl in my application. While preparing resources for just 1 wsdl (which has 5 soapActions) , my Eclipse IDE hanged and generated around 100+ MB of classes/objects.
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I found a much simpler alternative way to generating soap message. Given a Person Object:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude; @JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL) public class Person { private String name; private int age; private String address; //setter and getters below }

Below is a simple Soap Message Generator:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationFeature; import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper; import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature; import com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.jsr310.JavaTimeModule; import lombok.extern.slf4j.Slf4j; import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils; import com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat.xml.XmlMapper; @Slf4j public class SoapGenerator { protected static final ObjectMapper XML_MAPPER = new XmlMapper() .enable(DeserializationFeature.READ_UNKNOWN_ENUM_VALUES_AS_NULL) .configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false) .configure(SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS, false) .registerModule(new JavaTimeModule()); private static final String SOAP_BODY_OPEN = "<soap:Body>"; private static final String SOAP_BODY_CLOSE = "</soap:Body>"; private static final String SOAP_ENVELOPE_OPEN = "<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\">"; private static final String SOAP_ENVELOPE_CLOSE = "</soap:Envelope>"; public static String soapWrap(String xml) { return SOAP_ENVELOPE_OPEN + SOAP_BODY_OPEN + xml + SOAP_BODY_CLOSE + SOAP_ENVELOPE_CLOSE; } public static String soapUnwrap(String xml) { return StringUtils.substringBetween(xml, SOAP_BODY_OPEN, SOAP_BODY_CLOSE); } }

You can use by:

 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{ Person p = new Person(); p.setName("Test"); p.setAge(12); String xml = SoapGenerator.soapWrap(XML_MAPPER.writeValueAsString(p)); log.info("Generated String"); log.info(xml); }
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