Create your first SOAP API

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You can view, create, and manage SOAP APIs, and publish the APIs to a configured destination for consumption in the webMethods API Gateway UI. The following section describes how you can create your first SOAP API in webMethods API Gateway.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a messaging protocol that enables users to view and manipulate resources in a standard and secure way. A SOAP API provides a web service to perform operations (such as create, read, update, and delete) on the resources. The data is typically exchanged in XML format. Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is an XML-based language for describing web services. The WSDL document describes the endpoints, operations, data types in the SOAP message, protocol, and data format for each operation. The WSDL document contains the following elements: types, message, portType, and binding.

A SOAP message is an XML document that contains the following elements:

  • An envelope element - Identifies the XML document as a SOAP message
  • A header element - Contains header information
  • A body element - Contains call and response information
  • A fault element - Contains errors and status information

A few reasons for using SOAP APIs in your system -

  • Legacy systems might support only XML
  • Requirement to support multiple modes of transport such as HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, JMS
  • Lack of support for other content types but just XML
  • Supports WSS (Web Services Security) and SSL
  • Built-in ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliant transactions that provide data reliability, safety, and privacy

In webMethods API Gateway, you can create SOAP APIs by importing it in two ways:

  • Using file
  • Using URL