Why is this simple SOAP client not working (org.apache.http)?

Question

I want to send an XML file as a request to a SOAP server. Here is the code I have: (modified from Sending HTTP Post request with SOAP action using org.apache.http )

import org.apache.http.client.*;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.*;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.*;
import org.apache.http.entity.StringEntity;
import org.apache.http.protocol.HTTP;
import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import java.net.URI;

public static void req()   {
        try {
            HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
            String body="xml here";
            String bodyLength=new Integer(body.length()).toString();

            URI uri=new URI("http://1.1.1.1:100/Service");
            HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(uri);
            httpPost.setHeader( "SOAPAction", "MonitoringService" );
            httpPost.setHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml;charset=UTF-8");


            StringEntity entity = new StringEntity(body, "text/xml",HTTP.DEFAULT_CONTENT_CHARSET);
            httpPost.setEntity(entity);

            RequestWrapper requestWrapper=new RequestWrapper(httpPost);
            requestWrapper.setMethod("POST");


            requestWrapper.setHeader("Content-Length",bodyLength);
            HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(requestWrapper);
            System.out.println(response);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

Before this I was getting error 'http 500' (internal server error) from the server , but now Im not getting any reply at all. I know that the server works right because with other clients there is no problem.

Thanks.

Trilbee

What do you mean by "before"? And what happens if you send a valid xml string instead of just xml here? – Porphyria

Please specify if you are using an IDE or not, if yes, then which. If you are using an IDE such as Oracle Jdeveloper 11g then just import the WSDL and the IDE will auto generate the code. – Organicism

You should post the body of your request. If there is something wrong with your xml its possible you dont get any response. – Ebba

Answer 1

org.apache.http API is not SOAP/web service aware and so you're doing the tricky work in a non-standard way. The code is not very java-friendly or flexible, because it can't automatically "bind" (convert) java object data into the SOAP request and out of the SOAP response. It's a little lengthy, tricky to debug and get working, and brittle - are you handling the full SOAP protocol, including fault handling, etc?.

Can I suggest using JAX-WS standard, which is built into the JVM:

1. Save the WSDL file to local disk
E.g. <app path>/META-INF/wsdl/abc.com/calculator/Calculator.wsdl
If you don't have the WSDL, you can type into browser & save result page to disk:
http://abc.com/calculator/Calculator?wsdl

2. Use wsimport command to convert WSDL to java class files
For JDK, tool is in <jdkdir>\bin\wsimport.exe (or .sh).
For an app server, will be something like <app_server_root>\bin\wsimport.exe (or .sh)

<filepath>\wsimport -keep -verbose <wsdlpath>\Calculator.wsdl

OR if your WSDL is available via a pre-existing webservice

<filepath>\wsimport -keep -verbose http://abc.com/calculator/Calculator?wsdl

(you can also include "-p com.abc.calculator" to set the package of generated classes)

Files like the following are generated - include these source files in your java project:

com\abc\calculator\ObjectFactory.java       
com\abc\calculator\package-info.java       
com\abc\calculator\Calculator.java       ............................name = `<wsdl:portType>` name attribute      
com\abc\calculator\CalculatorService.java     ................name = `<wsdl:service>` name attribute    
com\abc\calculator\CalculatorRequestType.java  .......name = schema type used in input message    
com\abc\calculator\CalculatorResultType.java ..........name = schema type used in output message

2. Create a JAX-WS SOAP web service client

package com.abc.calculator.client;

import javax.xml.ws.WebServiceRef;
import com.abc.calculator.CalculatorService;
import com.abc.calculator.Calculator;

public class CalculatorClient {

    @WebServiceRef(wsdlLocation="META-INF/wsdl/abc.com/calculator/Calculator.wsdl")
    // or @WebServiceRef(wsdlLocation="http://abc.com/calculator/Calculator?wsdl")
    public static CalculatorService calculatorService;

    public CalculatorResponseType testCalculation() {
        try {
            CalculatorRequestType request = new CalculatorRequest();
            request.setSomeParameter("abc");
            request.setOtherParameter(3);
            Calculator calculator = calculatorService.getCalculatorPort();
            // automatically generate SOAP XML message, send via HTTP, 
            // receive & marshal response to java object 
            String response = calculator.doCalculation(response);
        } catch(Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Modernistic

Answer 2

Try sending the request like this. This is how i did it last time:

try
        {
            StringBuffer strBuffer = new StringBuffer();
            HttpURLConnection connection = connectToEndPoint(endpoint);
            OutputStream outputStream = generateXMLOutput(connection, yourvalue, strDate);

            InputStream inputStream = connection.getInputStream();

            int i;
            while ((i = inputStream.read()) != -1) {
                Writer writer = new StringWriter();
                writer.write(i);
                strBuffer.append(writer.toString());

            String status = xmlOutputParse(strBuffer);

And the functions used:

private static HttpURLConnection connectToEndPoint(String wsEndPoint) throws MalformedURLException, IOException {
    URL urlEndPoint = new URL(wsEndPoint);
    URLConnection urlEndPointConnection = urlEndPoint.openConnection();
    HttpURLConnection httpUrlconnection = (HttpURLConnection) urlEndPointConnection;
    httpUrlconnection.setDoOutput(true);
    httpUrlconnection.setDoInput(true);
    httpUrlconnection.setRequestMethod("POST");
    httpUrlconnection.setRequestProperty("content-type", "application/soap+xml;charset=UTF-8");
    // set connection time out to 2 seconds
    System.setProperty("sun.net.client.defaultConnectTimeout", String.valueOf(2 * 1000));
    // httpUrlconnection.setConnectTimeout(2*1000);
    // set input stream read timeout to 2 seconds
    System.setProperty("sun.net.client.defaultReadTimeout", String.valueOf(2 * 1000));
    // httpUrlconnection.setReadTimeout(2*1000);
    return httpUrlconnection;
}

Where you manually create the xml(modify to your needs):

private static OutputStream generateXMLOutput(HttpURLConnection conn, String msisdn, String strDate) throws IOException {
    OutputStream outputStream = conn.getOutputStream();

    StringBuffer buf = new StringBuffer();

    buf.append("<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=\"http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope\" xmlns:ins=\"http://yournamespace">\r\n");
    buf.append("<soap:Header xmlns:wsa=\"http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing\">\r\n");

    //..... append all your lines .......       

    OutputStreamWriter outputStreamWriter = new OutputStreamWriter(outputStream, "UTF-8");

    outputStreamWriter.write("<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=\"http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope\" xmlns:ins=\"http://yournamespace\">\r\n");
    outputStreamWriter.write("<soap:Header xmlns:wsa=\"http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing\">\r\n");
    //..... write all your lines .......    

    outputStreamWriter.flush();

    outputStream.close();
    return outputStream;
}

And the function which returns your WS answer:

private static String xmlOutputParse(StringBuffer xmlInputParam) throws IOException, ParserConfigurationException, SAXException {
    String status = null;
    DocumentBuilderFactory docBuilderfFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = docBuilderfFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
    InputSource inputSource = new InputSource();
    inputSource.setCharacterStream(new StringReader(xmlInputParam.toString()));
    Document document = documentBuilder.parse(inputSource);
    NodeList nodeList = document.getElementsByTagName("ResponseHeader");
    Element element = (Element) nodeList.item(0);
    if (element == null) {
        return null;
    }
    NodeList name = element.getElementsByTagName("Status");
    Element line = (Element) name.item(0);
    if (line == null) {
        return null;
    }
    if (line.getFirstChild() instanceof CharacterData) {
        CharacterData cd = (CharacterData) line.getFirstChild();
        status = cd.getData().trim();
    }
    return status;
}

I think this solution (even though is long) works on most cases. I hope you can adapt it to your needs.

Best regards !

Inellineloquent