An easy way to write a portable web service

[David Thielen <da...@windward.net>]

Hi all;

 

Well after over 2 weeks of trying to create a web service using Axis and the
JWSDK, and giving up, I found an easy way to do it that is also totally
portable.

1.	Create a web service using Visual Studio/C# where the server has
your complete API, but doesn't do anything (ie basically just an interface).
2.	Get the wsdl from the service and save it.
3.	Write either a servlet or a NIO http server (I did the second). At
first have it just print out the text stream it receives.
4.	Use the C# client to call your java server - that will pass the SOAP
package across.
5.	Viewing the text stream, figure out how to pull out the SOAP. The
SOAP is just xml so you can then parse it using jdom or dom4j.
6.	Parse and respond to the messages from the C# client. This is your
way of making sure you are handling the SOAP correctly.

a.	Make sure you handle exceptions as well as when it works correctly.

7.	If you get a request for the wsdl file, pass back the one the C#
server generated.
8.	Once the server is working, create a java client and test it against
first the C# dummy server and then the real java server.

 

In my case the whole thing took under 3 days. Everything works fine, no
coming up against bugs or incomplete documentation. And best of all, it's
totally portable and does not require anything to be installed to work. (If
you go the servler route, then you do need an app server - but it's any app
server.)

 

- dave

Re: An easy way to write a portable web service

[Aleksander Slominski <as...@cs.indiana.edu>]

David,

i think you are making valid point here and that should be important to 
get this improved in future versions of AXIS (2.0?).

i have create an use case to keep track of it: 
http://nagoya.apache.org/jira/browse/AXIS-1496

alek

David Thielen wrote:

> Hi all;
>
> Well after over 2 weeks of trying to create a web service using Axis 
> and the JWSDK, and giving up, I found an easy way to do it that is 
> also totally portable.
>
>    1. Create a web service using Visual Studio/C# where the server has
>       your complete API, but doesn’t do anything (ie basically just an
>       interface).
>    2. Get the wsdl from the service and save it.
>    3. Write either a servlet or a NIO http server (I did the second).
>       At first have it just print out the text stream it receives.
>    4. Use the C# client to call your java server – that will pass the
>       SOAP package across.
>    5. Viewing the text stream, figure out how to pull out the SOAP.
>       The SOAP is just xml so you can then parse it using jdom or dom4j.
>    6. Parse and respond to the messages from the C# client. This is
>       your way of making sure you are handling the SOAP correctly.
>          1. Make sure you handle exceptions as well as when it works
>             correctly.
>    7. If you get a request for the wsdl file, pass back the one the C#
>       server generated.
>    8. Once the server is working, create a java client and test it
>       against first the C# dummy server and then the real java server.
>
> In my case the whole thing took under 3 days. Everything works fine, 
> no coming up against bugs or incomplete documentation. And best of 
> all, it’s totally portable and does not require anything to be 
> installed to work. (If you go the servler route, then you do need an 
> app server – but it’s any app server.)
>
> - dave
>


-- 
The best way to predict the future is to invent it - Alan Kay