Can we implement method overloading in web service class?

Question

I would like to implement method overloading in the Java web service class as follows:

public String myMethod(User user)
{
    // My code
} 

public String myMethod(User[] user)
{
    for(int i=0; i<user.length; i++)
    {
        myMethod(user[i]);
    }
}

If I forward a single User object to myMethod(), it should trigger the first method and if I send an array of Users, it should trigger the second method.

In the WSDL file it shows only a single method. However, if I try to call @WebMethod(operationName="") for both calls, I am unable to generate the WSDL file.

Lorca

I don't think it's possible to overload a webservice, and even if it is, it's certainly not good practice – Desiccator

Answer 1

Operation overloading is not allowed for web services.
It is explicitely prohibited in WS-BP and WSDL 1.2 also disallows it.
Even if you found a stack that has some support for this I would recommend not to follow this approach.
Overloading is an OO concept. Don't try to apply them to Service Oriented paradigm

Killer

Overloading isn't an OO concept and it doesn't have any relation with OO, for example, the C language is a procedural/structured language and it offers functions overloading. – Churl

Answer 2

Overloading the web service methods is not difficult. With Axis 1.4 at least it is fairly simple. If there are two overloaded methods in the service like below:

public String myMethod(String firstName, String lastName) throws RemoteException
public String myMethod(String name) throws RemoteException

Then a request like this:

http://localhost:8080/services/testService?method=myMethod&name=<name> 

will invoke the second method.

And a request like this one:

http://localhost:8080//services/testService?method=myMethod&firstName=<first_name>&lastName=<last_name>

will invoke the first method.

The resolution is done by Axis.

Ezraezri

+1, good info. Though I worked with Axis for a good while, I didn't know Axis could do that. I would never go about it this way since it is not "kosher" web service design, but it is good to know if I ever run into a corner case where I must implement such a thing. – Honesty