SOAP response wrongly deserializing as null in CXF + Simple frontend + Aegis databinding

Question

I'm writting a client for a SOAP Web Service. I'm using the library CXF. With the Simple frontend. And the Aegis databinding. The server is providing a Java interface (named MediaService) for the web methods, and I import that interface in the client project. I then use a MediaService.aegis.xml file to provide names for the method parameters (for them not to be named and when serializing the request).

Here is the code I use on the client:

ClientProxyFactoryBean factory = new ClientProxyFactoryBean();
factory.setDataBinding(new AegisDatabinding());
factory.setServiceClass(MediaService.class);
factory.setAddress(urlMediaServer);
MediaService service = (MediaService) factory.create();
final List<Reference> listeReferences = service.sendMedia(bu, media);

The service interface is like this:

public interface MediaService
{
    public List sendMedia(String bu, Media media) throws Exception;
}

I have enabled XML stream logging so that I see the XML stream that is sent to the server, and the stream it returns.

Here are the streams:

Request:

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <soap:Body>
        <ns1:sendMedia xmlns:ns1="http://service.soclemedia.mycompany.com/">
            <ns1:bu>sc_phx</ns1:bu>
            <ns1:media>
                <ns2:productId xmlns:ns2="http://bo.soclemedia.mycompany.com">TEST_CODE</ns2:productId>
                <ns2:mediaName xmlns:ns2="http://bo.soclemedia.mycompany.com">test.png</ns2:mediaName>
            </ns1:media>
        </ns1:sendMedia>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Response:

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <soap:Body>
        <sendMediaResponse xmlns="http://service.soclemedia.mycompany.com">
            <out xmlns="http://service.soclemedia.mycompany.com">
                <ns1:Reference xmlns:ns1="http://bo.soclemedia.mycompany.com">
                    <subType xmlns="http://bo.soclemedia.mycompany.com">standard</subType>
                    <typeMedia xmlns="http://bo.soclemedia.mycompany.com">photo</typeMedia>
                </ns1:Reference>
                <ns1:Reference xmlns:ns1="http://bo.soclemedia.mycompany.com">
                    <subType xmlns="http://bo.soclemedia.mycompany.com">standard</subType>
                    <typeMedia xmlns="http://bo.soclemedia.mycompany.com">photo</typeMedia>
                </ns1:Reference>
            </out>
        </sendMediaResponse>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

The service is called, it replies and the client receive the correct reply. But in the client, the line service.sendMedia(bu, media) making the Web Service call returns null. There is something wrong with deserializing the reply. Do you have any idea of what went wrong and how to fix it?

Best regards.

UPDATE:

I forgot to mention that when I call this method:

MediaService service = (MediaService) factory.create();

I get this error:

INFO: Creating Service {http://service.soclemedia.mycompany.com/}MediaService from class com.mycompany.soclemedia.service.MediaService
24 nov. 2011 15:18:37 org.apache.cxf.aegis.type.XMLTypeCreator <clinit>
INFO: Could not set aegis schema.  Not validating.
java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: This parser does not support specification "null" version "null"
    at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory.setSchema(DocumentBuilderFactory.java:489)
    at org.apache.cxf.aegis.type.XMLTypeCreator.<clinit>(XMLTypeCreator.java:125)
    at org.apache.cxf.aegis.AegisContext.createRootTypeCreator(AegisContext.java:122)
    at org.apache.cxf.aegis.AegisContext.createTypeCreator(AegisContext.java:111)
    at org.apache.cxf.aegis.AegisContext.initialize(AegisContext.java:153)
    at org.apache.cxf.aegis.databinding.AegisDatabinding.initialize(AegisDatabinding.java:229)
    at org.apache.cxf.service.factory.AbstractServiceFactoryBean.initializeDataBindings(AbstractServiceFactoryBean.java:86)
    at org.apache.cxf.service.factory.ReflectionServiceFactoryBean.buildServiceFromClass(ReflectionServiceFactoryBean.java:438)
    at org.apache.cxf.service.factory.ReflectionServiceFactoryBean.initializeServiceModel(ReflectionServiceFactoryBean.java:501)
    at org.apache.cxf.service.factory.ReflectionServiceFactoryBean.create(ReflectionServiceFactoryBean.java:241)
    at org.apache.cxf.frontend.AbstractWSDLBasedEndpointFactory.createEndpoint(AbstractWSDLBasedEndpointFactory.java:101)
    at org.apache.cxf.frontend.ClientFactoryBean.create(ClientFactoryBean.java:90)
    at org.apache.cxf.frontend.ClientProxyFactoryBean.create(ClientProxyFactoryBean.java:153)
    ...

Here is my cxf.xml:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xmlns:cxf="http://cxf.apache.org/core"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://cxf.apache.org/core http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/core.xsd">
    <cxf:bus>
        <cxf:features>
            <cxf:logging/>
        </cxf:features>
    </cxf:bus> 
</beans>

UPDATE 2:

And here is my MediaService.aegis.xml:

<mappings>
    <mapping>
        <method name="sendMedia">
            <parameter index="0" mappedName="bu"/>
            <parameter index="1" mappedName="media"/>
            <return-type componentType="com.mycompany.soclemedia.bo.Reference" />
        </method>
    </mapping>
</mappings>

Answer 1

Just a thought:

In a project I recently experienced that a CXF webservice worked fine when run locally in Jetty, whereas all top-level Collection's deserialized as null when run in a Weblogic container.

Apparently this was caused by a known bug in JAXB (don't have a reference handy, sorry) and the workaround was to wrap the Collection in this manner:

public class Wrapper 
{ 
    private List<Reference> references; 
    ... 
}

and have the webservice work with this object on the wire instead.

I hope this may apply to your issue as well, if not good luck anyways :-)

/Anders/