How to do a SOAP Web Service call from Java class?

I'm relative new to the webservices world and my research seems to have confused me more than enlighten me, my problem is that I was given a library(jar) which I have to extend with some webservice functionality.

This library will be shared to other developers, and among the classes in the jar will be classes that have a method which calls a webservice (that essentially sets an attribute of the class, does some business logic, like storing the object in a db, etc and sends back the object with those modifications). I want to make the call to this service as simple as possible, hopefully as simple so that the developer using the class only need to do.

Car c = new Car("Blue");
c.webmethod();

I have been studying JAX-WS to use on the server but seems to me that I don't need to create a wsimport in the server nor the wsimport on the client, since I know that both have the classes, I just need some interaction between classes shared in both the server and the client. How do you think makes sense to do the webservice and the call in the class?

I understand your problem boils down to how to call a SOAP (JAX-WS) web service from Java and get its returning object. In that case, you have two possible approaches:

1. Generate the Java classes through wsimport and use them; or
2. Create a SOAP client that:
3. Serializes the service's parameters to XML;
4. Calls the web method through HTTP manipulation; and
5. Parse the returning XML response back into an object.

About the first approach (using wsimport):

I see you already have the services' (entities or other) business classes, and it's a fact that the wsimport generates a whole new set of classes (that are somehow duplicates of the classes you already have).

I'm afraid, though, in this scenario, you can only either:

• Adapt (edit) the wsimport generated code to make it use your business classes (this is difficult and somehow not worth it - bear in mind everytime the WSDL changes, you'll have to regenerate and readapt the code); or
• Give up and use the wsimport generated classes. (In this solution, you business code could "use" the generated classes as a service from another architectural layer.)

About the second approach (create your custom SOAP client):

In order to implement the second approach, you'll have to:

1. Make the call:
   • Use the SAAJ (SOAP with Attachments API for Java) framework (see below, it's shipped with Java SE 1.6 or above) to make the calls; or
   • You can also do it through java.net.HttpUrlconnection (and some java.io handling).
2. Turn the objects into and back from XML:
   • Use an OXM (Object to XML Mapping) framework such as JAXB to serialize/deserialize the XML from/into objects
   • Or, if you must, manually create/parse the XML (this can be the best solution if the received object is only a little bit differente from the sent one).

Creating a SOAP client using classic java.net.HttpUrlConnection is not that hard (but not that simple either), and you can find in this link a very good starting code.

I recommend you use the SAAJ framework:

> SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ) is mainly used for dealing directly with SOAP Request/Response messages which happens behind the scenes in any Web Service API. It allows the developers to directly send and receive soap messages instead of using JAX-WS.

See below a working example (run it!) of a SOAP web service call using SAAJ. It calls this web service.

import javax.xml.soap.*;

public class SOAPClientSAAJ {

    // SAAJ - SOAP Client Testing
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        /*
            The example below requests from the Web Service at:
             https://www.w3schools.com/xml/tempconvert.asmx?op=CelsiusToFahrenheit


            To call other WS, change the parameters below, which are:
             - the SOAP Endpoint URL (that is, where the service is responding from)
             - the SOAP Action

            Also change the contents of the method createSoapEnvelope() in this class. It constructs
             the inner part of the SOAP envelope that is actually sent.
         */
        String soapEndpointUrl = "https://www.w3schools.com/xml/tempconvert.asmx";
        String soapAction = "https://www.w3schools.com/xml/CelsiusToFahrenheit";

        callSoapWebService(soapEndpointUrl, soapAction);
    }

    private static void createSoapEnvelope(SOAPMessage soapMessage) throws SOAPException {
        SOAPPart soapPart = soapMessage.getSOAPPart();

        String myNamespace = "myNamespace";
        String myNamespaceURI = "https://www.w3schools.com/xml/";

        // SOAP Envelope
        SOAPEnvelope envelope = soapPart.getEnvelope();
        envelope.addNamespaceDeclaration(myNamespace, myNamespaceURI);

            /*
            Constructed SOAP Request Message:
            <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:myNamespace="https://www.w3schools.com/xml/">
                <SOAP-ENV:Header/>
                <SOAP-ENV:Body>
                    <myNamespace:CelsiusToFahrenheit>
                        <myNamespace:Celsius>100</myNamespace:Celsius>
                    </myNamespace:CelsiusToFahrenheit>
                </SOAP-ENV:Body>
            </SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
            */

        // SOAP Body
        SOAPBody soapBody = envelope.getBody();
        SOAPElement soapBodyElem = soapBody.addChildElement("CelsiusToFahrenheit", myNamespace);
        SOAPElement soapBodyElem1 = soapBodyElem.addChildElement("Celsius", myNamespace);
        soapBodyElem1.addTextNode("100");
    }

    private static void callSoapWebService(String soapEndpointUrl, String soapAction) {
        try {
            // Create SOAP Connection
            SOAPConnectionFactory soapConnectionFactory = SOAPConnectionFactory.newInstance();
            SOAPConnection soapConnection = soapConnectionFactory.createConnection();

            // Send SOAP Message to SOAP Server
            SOAPMessage soapResponse = soapConnection.call(createSOAPRequest(soapAction), soapEndpointUrl);

            // Print the SOAP Response
            System.out.println("Response SOAP Message:");
            soapResponse.writeTo(System.out);
            System.out.println();

            soapConnection.close();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println("\nError occurred while sending SOAP Request to Server!\nMake sure you have the correct endpoint URL and SOAPAction!\n");
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    private static SOAPMessage createSOAPRequest(String soapAction) throws Exception {
        MessageFactory messageFactory = MessageFactory.newInstance();
        SOAPMessage soapMessage = messageFactory.createMessage();

        createSoapEnvelope(soapMessage);

        MimeHeaders headers = soapMessage.getMimeHeaders();
        headers.addHeader("SOAPAction", soapAction);

        soapMessage.saveChanges();

        /* Print the request message, just for debugging purposes */
        System.out.println("Request SOAP Message:");
        soapMessage.writeTo(System.out);
        System.out.println("\n");

        return soapMessage;
    }

}

About using JAXB for serializing/deserializing, it is very easy to find information about it. You can start here: http://www.mkyong.com/java/jaxb-hello-world-example/.

Or just use Apache CXF's wsdl2java to generate objects you can use.

It is included in the binary package you can download from their website. You can simply run a command like this:

$ ./wsdl2java -p com.mynamespace.for.the.api.objects -autoNameResolution http://www.someurl.com/DefaultWebService?wsdl

It uses the wsdl to generate objects, which you can use like this (object names are also grabbed from the wsdl, so yours will be different a little):

DefaultWebService defaultWebService = new DefaultWebService();
String res = defaultWebService.getDefaultWebServiceHttpSoap11Endpoint().login("webservice","dadsadasdasd");
System.out.println(res);

There is even a Maven plug-in which generates the sources: https://cxf.apache.org/docs/maven-cxf-codegen-plugin-wsdl-to-java.html

Note: If you generate sources using CXF and IDEA, you might want to look at this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/46812593/840315

Might help for someone who have xml request as string. if you have WSDL, You can create a new soap request in SoapUI with that WSDL file.
It would automatically generate the Structure/XML for input request.

Here is some simple version of Java code you can use to call Soap service if you have the input request xml from SoapUI:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.DataOutputStream;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;

public class SimpleSoapClient {

public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {
		
	String address="Hyderabad";

	/* place your xml request from soap ui below with necessary changes in parameters*/
	
    String xml="<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:ws=\"http://www.YourUrlAsPerWsdl.com/\">\r\n" + 
 				 "   <soapenv:Header/>\r\n" + 
 				 "   <soapenv:Body>\r\n" + 
 				 "      <ws:callRest>\r\n" + 
 				 "         <name>"+"Hello"+"</name>\r\n" + 
 				 "         <address>"+address+"</address>\r\n" + 
 				 "      </ws:callRest>\r\n" + 
 				 "   </soapenv:Body>\r\n" + 
 				 "</soapenv:Envelope>";
			String responseF=callSoapService(xml);
			System.out.println(responseF);
    }
    

}

static String callSoapService(String soapRequest) {
	try {
	 String url = "https://gogle.com/service/hello"; // replace your URL here
	 URL obj = new URL(url);
	 HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) obj.openConnection();
	 
	 // change these values as per soapui request on top left of request, click on RAW, you will find all the headers
	 con.setRequestMethod("POST");
	 con.setRequestProperty("Content-Type","text/xml; charset=utf-8"); 
	 con.setDoOutput(true);
	 DataOutputStream wr = new DataOutputStream(con.getOutputStream());
	 wr.writeBytes(soapRequest);
	 wr.flush();
	 wr.close();
	 String responseStatus = con.getResponseMessage();
	 System.out.println(responseStatus);
	 BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
	 con.getInputStream()));
	 String inputLine;
	 StringBuffer response = new StringBuffer();
	 while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
		 response.append(inputLine);
	 }
	 in.close();
	 
	 // You can play with response which is available as string now:
	 String finalvalue= response.toString();
	 
	 // or you can parse/substring the required tag from response as below based your response code
	 finalvalue= finalvalue.substring(finalvalue.indexOf("<response>")+10,finalvalue.indexOf("</response>")); */
	 
	 return finalvalue;
	 } 
	catch (Exception e) {
		return e.getMessage();
	}	
}

}

I found a much simpler alternative way to generating soap message. Given a Person Object:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude;

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)
public class Person {
  private String name;
  private int age;
  private String address; //setter and getters below
}

Below is a simple Soap Message Generator:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.jsr310.JavaTimeModule;
import lombok.extern.slf4j.Slf4j;
import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat.xml.XmlMapper;

@Slf4j
public class SoapGenerator {

  protected static final ObjectMapper XML_MAPPER = new XmlMapper()
      .enable(DeserializationFeature.READ_UNKNOWN_ENUM_VALUES_AS_NULL)
      .configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false)
      .configure(SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS, false)
      .registerModule(new JavaTimeModule());

  private static final String SOAP_BODY_OPEN = "<soap:Body>";
  private static final String SOAP_BODY_CLOSE = "</soap:Body>";
  private static final String SOAP_ENVELOPE_OPEN = "<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\">";
  private static final String SOAP_ENVELOPE_CLOSE = "</soap:Envelope>";

  public static String soapWrap(String xml) {
    return SOAP_ENVELOPE_OPEN + SOAP_BODY_OPEN + xml + SOAP_BODY_CLOSE + SOAP_ENVELOPE_CLOSE;
  }

  public static String soapUnwrap(String xml) {
    return StringUtils.substringBetween(xml, SOAP_BODY_OPEN, SOAP_BODY_CLOSE);
  }
}

You can use by:

 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        Person p = new Person();
        p.setName("Test");
        p.setAge(12);
    
        String xml = SoapGenerator.soapWrap(XML_MAPPER.writeValueAsString(p));
        log.info("Generated String");
        log.info(xml);
      }