Howto setup JAX-WS client to use ISO-8859-1 instead of UTF-8?

Question

I would like to configure my JAX-WS client to send messages in ISO-8859-1. Currently UTF-8 is used.

Here is what the client tries to do:

Map<String, Object> reqContext = ((BindingProvider) service).getRequestContext();
Map httpHeaders = new HashMap();
httpHeaders.put("Content-type",Collections.singletonList("text/xml;charset=ISO-8859-1"));
reqContext.put(MessageContext.HTTP_REQUEST_HEADERS, httpHeaders);

But this setting is ignored and tcpmon shows that the following is received by the server:

POST /service/helloWorld?WSDL HTTP/1.1
Content-type: text/xml;charset="utf-8"
Soapaction: "helloWorld"
Accept: text/xml, multipart/related, text/html, image/gif, image/jpeg, *; q=.2, */*; q=.2
User-Agent: Oracle JAX-WS 2.1.5
Host: 1.1.1.1:8001
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 4135

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<S:Envelopexmlns:S="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">...  

So, the setting is overriden and UTF-8 is used, both in the HTTP header and in the XML message. The service is defined by the WSDL which is encoded in UTF-8.

Q: Should I redefine the service WSDL to be encoded in ISO-8899-1 and then regenerate the client? Or, is it that I am just not setting the HTTP headers properly?

Licorice

Which JDK vendor/version does the client use? I can remember a bug in a former JAX-WS implementation (1.6.0.1 or so)... – Hannan

The client is running Java 1.6.0_29, the JAX-WS library used is Weblogic "Oracle JAX-WS 2.1.5". I have just tested the JAXWS that comes with JDK 6, the "JAX-WS RI 2.1.6", and the results is the same – Bilander

Answer 1

Using handler:

public class MyMessageHandler implements SOAPHandler<SOAPMessageContext> {

@Override
public boolean handleMessage(SOAPMessageContext context) {
    Boolean outbound = (Boolean) context.get(MessageContext.MESSAGE_OUTBOUND_PROPERTY);
    if (outbound.booleanValue()) {
        try {
            context.getMessage().setProperty(SOAPMessage.CHARACTER_SET_ENCODING,
                            "ISO-8859-1");
        }
        catch (SOAPException e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }
    }
    return true;
}

And register the handler:

    BindingProvider bindProv = (BindingProvider) service;
    List<Handler> handlerChain = bindProv.getBinding().getHandlerChain();
    handlerChain.add(new MyMessageHandler ());

Chery

note that according both to practice and to the java.xml.ws.Binding documentation, "getHandlerChain() gets a copy of the handler chain for a protocol binding instance. If the returned chain is modified a call to setHandlerChain is required to configure the binding instance with the new chain." – Pugliese

Answer 2

The answer from jaypi seems right. But I needed to add some default implementations. Also it was easy to put inline:

UPDATE: I guess you have to set the handlerChain explicitly. changing the result of getHandlerChain will do nothing.

    List<Handler> chain = bindingProvider.getBinding().getHandlerChain();
    chain.add(new SOAPHandler<SOAPMessageContext>() {
      @Override
      public boolean handleMessage(SOAPMessageContext context) {
        LOG.info("BaseService.handleMessage" + context);
        Boolean outbound = (Boolean) context.get(MessageContext.MESSAGE_OUTBOUND_PROPERTY);
        if (outbound.booleanValue()) {
          try {
            context.getMessage().setProperty(SOAPMessage.CHARACTER_SET_ENCODING, "ISO-8859-1");
          } catch (Exception e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
          }
        }
        return true;        
      }

      @Override
      public boolean handleFault(SOAPMessageContext context) {
        return true;
      }

      @Override
      public void close(MessageContext context) {
      }

      @Override
      public Set<QName> getHeaders() {
        return null;
      }      
    });
    bindingProvider.getBinding().setHandlerChain(chain);

Summon