Convert a WSDL to its respective HTTP Bindings

Question

I\'m simply trying to convert a WSDl into a number of different HTTP-requests from data supplied by the WSDL. I have read through a ton of similar questions, but none really

Answer 1

When calling a SOAP web service you can use a static invocation or a dynamic invocation.

Static invocation means creating a stub from the WSDL and using that to perform the call. This creates all the "plumbing" code for you, but is tightly tied to just that web service and you can't use it for other web services with different contracts. For each WSDL you need to create another stub.

With dynamic invocation, you read the WSDL at runtime and figure out how to call the web service based on the info you get from the WSDL. Feed it multiple WSDLs and the client adapts.

The dynamic invocation is what SoapUI uses to generate the sample requests and responses.

It reads the WSDL you feed it, extracts the XML schema from the types section and generates XML instances. To do so, it uses Wsdl4j and XmlBeans under the hood.

Your decision to use Wsdl4j is good as it gives you control when parsing the WSDL. But also have a look at XmlBeans; it has some other tools you might find useful, like the schema to instance class for example.

If you need to see it in action (maybe debug it to see what's going on) you could create a quick dirty test with the SoapUI API:

import com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.WsdlInterface;
import com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.WsdlProject;
import com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.support.wsdl.WsdlImporter;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        WsdlProject project = new WsdlProject();
        WsdlInterface[] wsdls = WsdlImporter.importWsdl(project, "http://www.html2xml.nl/Services/Calculator/Version1/Calculator.asmx?wsdl");
        WsdlInterface wsdl = wsdls[0];
        System.out.println(wsdl.getOperationByName("Add").createRequest(true));
        System.exit(0); // just to clear up some threads created by the project 
    }
}

The message you should see printed (for the Add operation of the Calculator WS) would be something like this:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:tem="http://tempuri.org/">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <tem:Add>
         <tem:a>?</tem:a>
         <tem:b>?</tem:b>
      </tem:Add>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Hope this helps you move beyond the first step.