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An example web service in C# - works in .NET/Xamarin/Mono on Windows, Mac and Linux.

When this document mentions SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) it is referring to the self documeting and highly interoperable SOAP Document/Literal Wrapped format and not an the deprecated - and maligned - SOAP RPC format, which is a different pragma.

I've finally got a new macbook at work. Looking for a GUI Soap client that can read a WSDL, generate sample request based on the WSDL and let me edit.

C# Web Service Example

This is an example of a cross platform web service that provides SOAP Document/Literal Wrapped web service.

Web services generated on Mono all have complete automatically documentation with example usage exposed as web pages on the server along with interactive examples (where you can submit structured objects via an HTML form and view the responses) and of course service descriptions (WSDL files) and URL endpoints are generated for you. The code used to create services on Mono runs without modification on .NET (although services built for .NET may not run with out modification on Mono).

This example is in written in C#, using Mono/Xamarin Studio IDE (available for Windows, Mac and Linux). The services are self documenting and interoperate really with well with other languages (Java, C+, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, etc). In languages like Java and PHP it works great with the built in SOAP client - on platforms that don't have a SOAP client you can use simple HTTP/REST calls.

It's cross platform and runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and other UNIX platforms. The class libraries used can be shared between desktop, server, mobile (iOS and Android) and console platforms.

You can also use JSON or simple XML with REST for these methods, which is great for simple services - although then you don't get the benifits of automatic server-to-client exception propogation (where any exception on the server can bubble the same exception to the client) or the full benifits of type safety. As with most things, it's very dependant on the use case at hand as to if you need that level of robustness in error handling and type checking in your API.

What's the purpose of this example?

I've used C# and Xamarin/Mono to write and deploy services on Mac, Windows, Linux, BSD and Solaris at several jobs in the past - including while working at the BBC, AOL and Sky, which were all mixed platform environments. I've consumed these services from C#, C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, C++ in xojo (formerly RealStudio) and other scripting languages.

Many if not most of the deployed .NET services I've seen in production have been pretty badly managled - even though it's quite straight forward to get it right, especially if you use Visual Studio or Mono Project (from Xamarin) to create them. I thought I'd get round to uploading an example it is to write a good service as a reference point.

I've included some examples of sane ways to handle returning complex objects, how to do input validation, how to create WSI compliant responses and some examples of how best to handle errors.

As I update this for 2017, SOAP Document/Literal Wrapped still remains best supported on C# - largely thanks to Microsoft, the first initial proponents of the format and of course of C#. Using C# with .NET or Mono generates clients that are highly interoperable with other platforms and languages. Remarkably, there still isn't anything that's quite comparible for building services (using XML or JSON) in any other language.

If you're doing cross platform development for web services - especially for robust or enterprise web service services - and you're not using C#/Mono for them you might be missing out. It might not seem an obvious choice if your stack is normally something like Java, Node.js, Ruby, PHP or even Go or Rust, but if your work revolves around building well defined, type safe web services with robust exchange of data - especially passing objects between systems - then it's strongly worth considering as it's a remarkable platform.

Alternatives

Both JSON API and JSON Schema can be combined to similarly define services and APIs that use JSON, although (sadly) they are not quite as complete in scope and there are currently no tools which create generate auto-documenting, robust services from code in the same manner (though there is software that does some of the work). There are several different client libaries which all work great, however soap server libraries require quite a bit more work to create a service.

In Java you can use the Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) to create SOAP services. Other alternatives for Java include Apache CXF and Apache Axis2. Currently all of these (and simlar) options for Java have their own quirks and compatiblity isusues that cause interoperability problems when consuming them from different clients.

PHP's built in SoapClient works perfectly with services written in C#, you just pass the URL of the service that gets generated and you can work with the returned object as if it was a local class. The corresponding SoapServer method to create services is, unfortunately, not as sophisticated.

Thanks to the auto-docmentation, simple human-readable and restful nature, any language can consume the services easily, even if there is no native SOAP suport, just by treating it as REST/XML - although if there is a soap client for your platform it's much easier to consume.

Feedback

Feedback via me@iaincollins.com or via Twitter via @iaincollins is welcome, as are pull requests.

Web Service Clients

This section shows how to create and run these types of clients:

  • Dynamic invocation interface (DII)

When you run these client examples, they will access the MyHelloService that you deployed in Creating a Simple Web Service and Client with JAX-RPC.

Dynamic Proxy Client

This example resides in the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/dynamicproxy/ directory.

The client in the preceding section uses a static stub for the proxy. In contrast, the client example in this section calls a remote procedure through a dynamic proxy, a class that is created during runtime. Although the source code for the static stub client relies on an implementation-specific class, the code for the dynamic proxy client does not have this limitation.

Coding the Dynamic Proxy Client

The DynamicProxyHello program constructs the dynamic proxy as follows:

    Service helloService =
    serviceFactory.createService(helloWsdlUrl,
    new QName(nameSpaceUri, serviceName));

    A Service object is a factory for proxies. To create the Service object (helloService), the program calls the createService method on another type of factory, a ServiceFactory object.

    The createService method has two parameters: the URL of the WSDL file and a QName object. At runtime, the client gets information about the service by looking up its WSDL. In this example, the URL of the WSDL file points to the WSDL that was deployed with MyHelloService:

    http://localhost:8080/hello-jaxrpc/hello?WSDL

    A QName object is a tuple that represents an XML qualified name. The tuple is composed of a namespace URI and the local part of the qualified name. In the QName parameter of the createService invocation, the local part is the service name, MyHelloService.

  1. The program creates a proxy (myProxy) with a type of the service endpoint interface (HelloIF):
  2. dynamicproxy.HelloIF myProxy =
    (dynamicproxy.HelloIF)helloService.getPort(
    new QName(nameSpaceUri, portName),
    dynamicproxy.HelloIF.class);

    The helloService object is a factory for dynamic proxies. To create myProxy, the program calls the getPort method of helloService. This method has two parameters: a QName object that specifies the port name and a java.lang.Class object for the service endpoint interface (HelloIF). The HelloIF class is generated by wscompile. The port name (HelloIFPort) is specified by the WSDL file.

Here is the listing for the HelloClient.java file, located in the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/dynamicproxy/src/ directory:

Building and Running the Dynamic Proxy Client

Before performing the steps in this section, you must first create and deploy MyHelloService as described in Creating a Simple Web Service and Client with JAX-RPC.

To build and package the client, go to the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/dynamicproxy/ directory and type the following:

The preceding command runs these tasks:

The generate-interface task runs wscompile with the -import option. The wscompile command reads the MyHelloService.wsdl file and generates the service endpoint interface class (HelloIF.class). Although this wscompile invocation also creates stubs, the dynamic proxy client does not use these stubs, which are required only by static stub clients.

The compile-client task compiles the src/HelloClient.java file.

The package-dynamic task creates the dist/client.jar file, which contains HelloIF.class and HelloClient.class.

To run the client, type the following:

The client should display the following line:

Dynamic Invocation Interface Client

This example resides in the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/dii/ directory.

With the dynamic invocation interface (DII), a client can call a remote procedure even if the signature of the remote procedure or the name of the service is unknown until runtime. In contrast to a static stub or dynamic proxy client, a DII client does not require runtime classes generated by wscompile. However, as you'll see in the following section, the source code for a DII client is more complicated than the code for the other two types of clients.

This example is for advanced users who are familiar with WSDL documents. (See Further Information.)

Coding the DII Client

The DIIHello program performs these steps:

    Service service =
    factory.createService(new QName(qnameService));

    To get a Service object, the program invokes the createService method of a ServiceFactory object. The parameter of the createService method is a QName object that represents the name of the service, MyHelloService. The WSDL file specifies this name as follows:

    <service name='MyHelloService'>

  1. From the Service object, creates a Call object:
  2. QName port = new QName(qnamePort);
    Call call = service.createCall(port);

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    A Call object supports the dynamic invocation of the remote procedures of a service. To get a Call object, the program invokes the Service object's createCall method. The parameter of createCall is a QName object that represents the service endpoint interface, MyHelloServiceRPC. In the WSDL file, the name of this interface is designated by the portType element:

    <portType name='HelloIF'>

  3. Sets the service endpoint address on the Call object:
  4. call.setTargetEndpointAddress(endpoint);

    In the WSDL file, this address is specified by the <soap:address> element.

    SOAPACTION_USE_PROPERTY
    SOAPACTION_URI_PROPERTY
    ENCODING_STYLE_PROPERTY

    To learn more about these properties, refer to the SOAP and WSDL documents listed in Further Information.

  5. Specifies the method's return type, name, and parameter:
  6. QName QNAME_TYPE_STRING = new QName(NS_XSD, 'string');
    call.setReturnType(QNAME_TYPE_STRING);
    call.setOperationName(new QName(BODY_NAMESPACE_VALUE,
    'sayHello'));
    call.addParameter('String_1', QNAME_TYPE_STRING,
    ParameterMode.IN);

    To specify the return type, the program invokes the setReturnType method on the Call object. The parameter of setReturnType is a QName object that represents an XML string type.

    The program designates the method name by invoking the setOperationName method with a QName object that represents sayHello.

    To indicate the method parameter, the program invokes the addParameter method on the Call object. The addParameter method has three arguments: a String for the parameter name (String_1), a QName object for the XML type, and a ParameterMode object to indicate the passing mode of the parameter (IN).

    String[] params = { 'Murphy' };
    String result = (String)call.invoke(params);

    The program assigns the parameter value (Murphy) to a String array (params) and then executes the invoke method with the String array as an argument.

Here is the listing for the HelloClient.java file, located in the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/dii/src/ directory:

Building and Running the DII Client

Before performing the steps in this section, you must first create and deploy MyHelloService as described in Creating a Simple Web Service and Client with JAX-RPC.

To build and package the client, go to the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/dii/ directory and type the following:

This build task compiles HelloClient and packages it into the dist/client.jar file. Unlike the previous client examples, the DII client does not require files generated by wscompile.

To run the client, type this command:

The client should display this line:

Application Client

Unlike the stand-alone clients in the preceding sections, the client in this section is an application client. Because it's a J2EE component, an application client can locate a local Web service by invoking the JNDI lookup method.

J2EE Application HelloClient Listing

Here is the listing for the HelloClient.java file, located in the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/appclient/src/ directory:

Building the Application Client

Before performing the steps in this section, you must first create and deploy MyHelloService as described in Creating a Simple Web Service and Client with JAX-RPC.

To build the client, go to the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/appclient/ directory and type the following:

As with the static stub client, the preceding command compiles HelloClient.java and runs wscompile by invoking the generate-stubs target.

Packaging the Application Client

Packaging this client is a two-step process:

  1. Create a JAR file for the application client and add it to the EAR file.

To create the EAR file, follow these steps:

  1. Click Browse.
  2. In the file chooser, navigate to <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/appclient.
  3. Click New Application.

To start the New Application Client wizard, select FileNewApplication Client. The wizard displays the following dialog boxes.

For
    1. Read the explanatory text for an overview of the wizard's features.
  1. JAR File Contents dialog box
    1. Select the button labeled Create New AppClient Module in Application.
    2. In the combo box below this button, select HelloServiceApp.
    3. In the AppClient Display Name field, enter HelloClient.
    4. In the tree under Available Files, locate the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/appclient directory.
    5. Click Add.
    6. Click Next.
    1. In the Main Class combo box, select appclient.HelloClient.
    2. Click Finish.

Specifying the Web Reference

When it invokes the lookup method, the HelloClient refers to the Web service as follows:

You specify this reference as follows.

  1. Select the Web Service Refs tab.
  2. In the Coded Name field, enter service/MyJAXRPCHello.
  3. In the Service Interface combo box, select appclient.MyHelloService.
  4. In the WSDL File combo box, select META-INF/wsdl/MyHelloService.wsdl.
  5. In the Local Part field, enter MyHelloService.
  6. In the Mapping File combo box, select mapping.xml.

Deploying and Running the Application Client

To deploy the application client, follow these steps:

  1. Select ToolsDeploy.
  2. In the Deploy Module dialog box select the checkbox labeled Return Client JAR.
  3. In the field below the checkbox, enter this directory:
  4. <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/appclient

To run the client follow these steps:

  1. In a terminal window, go to the <INSTALL>/j2eetutorial14/examples/jaxrpc/appclient/ directory.
  2. appclient -client HelloServiceAppClient.jar
    http://localhost:8080/hello-jaxrpc/hello

The client should display this line:

More JAX-RPC Clients

Other chapters in this book also have JAX-RPC client examples:

  • Chapter 16 shows how a JSP page can be a static stub client that accesses a remote Web service. See The Example JSP Pages (page 634).
  • Chapter 32 includes a static stub client that demonstrates basic authentication. See Example: Basic Authentication with JAX-RPC (page 1161).
  • Chapter 32 includes a static stub client that demonstrates mutual authentication. See Example: Client-Certificate Authentication over HTTP/SSL with JAX-RPC (page 1169).