Axis EasyInvoke Soap WS Function Component

The Axis EasyInvokeSoapWS Function Component (FC) is part of the Tivoli® Directory Integrator Web Services suite.

This is a "simplified" web service invocation component: it is a stand-alone FC with its own Config screen, but internally performs the same functions as the following three FCs: AxisJavaToSoap, InvokeSoapWS and AxisSoapToJava.

The functionality provided is the same as if you chain and configure these three FCs in an AssemblyLine. When using this FC you lose the possibility to hook custom processing, that is, you are tied to the processing and binding provided by Axis, but you gain simplicity of setup and use.

Note that some scenarios cannot be handled by this Function Component, and you should use the aforementioned combination of AxisJavaToSoap, InvokeSoapWS and AxisSoapToJava instead. Such scenarios are:

• Need to process SOAP headers
• Serialization/deserialization problems (see Serialization/deserialization problems for more information on serialization/deserialization problems and how to register custom serializers/deserializers to handle these problems)

Configuration

Parameters

WSDL URL

The URL of the WSDL document describing the service. This parameter is required; otherwise an exception is thrown on initialization.

SOAP Operation

The name of the SOAP operation as described in the WSDL file. This parameter is required; otherwise an exception is thrown on initialization.

Login username

The login username sent to the server, using HTTP Basic authentication. If the server requires authorization it uses this value and the next (Login password) to authenticate the client. The encoding used is Base64 and is done internally by the InvokeSoapWS FC.

Login password

The login password sent to the server. If the server requires authorization it uses this value and the previous (Login username) to authenticate the client.

Complex Types

This parameter is optional; if specified, it should be a list of fully qualified Java class names (including the package name), where the different elements (Java classes) of this list are separated by one or more of the following symbols: a comma, a semicolon, a space, a carriage return or a new line.

Operation Parameters

The list of ordered SOAP operation parameter names. This parameter is required if the SOAP operation has any parameters and the FC is passed an Entry; if the SOAP operation has no parameters and the FC is passed an Entry then this parameter must be empty. If no Entry is passed, the content of the parameter is not relevant.

• If specified, the parameter must contain a list of Attribute names, where different Attribute names are separated by one or more of the following symbols: a comma, a semicolon, a space, a carriage return or a new line.
• Each item from this list is a name of an Attribute, which must be present in the Entry passed to the FC. If one of these Attributes is missing, an Exception is thrown.
• The order of the items from the list determines the order in which the Attribute values are passed as parameters to the SOAP operation.

Timout

The time for retrieving the data (in seconds, with the possibility to specify a decimal fraction in milliseconds. If smaller than 0.001 or explicitly set to 0 then will wait forever). Default value is 60.

Detailed Log

Checking this box causes additional log messages to be generated.

Comment

Your own comments go here.

Security and Authentication

The AxisEasyInvokeSoapWS FC uses HTTP basic authentication. When the username and password parameters of the FC are provided, then this information is sent to the server; if it requires authentication it takes these two parameters for username and password.

Function Component Input

Entry or a Java object representing the web service input data. If anything else is passed, an Exception is thrown.

Function Component Output

Entry or a Java object representing the web service output data.

Using the FC

This Function Component (FC) provides a relatively simple way of invoking SOAP over HTTP web services.

This is how the communication flows:

The following usability notes apply:

• If this FC is passed a Java Object array (Object[]) then it passes to the SOAP operation each Java Object from this array in the order in which the Objects are stored in the array. If this FC is passed an Entry, then the order and values of the parameters passed to the SOAP operation are determined by the value of the SOAP Operation FC parameter.
• This FC is capable of generating and parsing Document-style SOAP messages and RPC-style SOAP messages as well as parsing SOAP Fault messages. The style of the message generated is determined by the WSDL specified by the WSDL URL FC parameter.
• The FC is capable of generating and parsing SOAP messages encoded using both "literal" encoding and SOAP Section 5 encoding. The encoding of the message generated is determined by the WSDL specified by the WSDL URL FC parameter.
• This FC is capable of generating and parsing SOAP messages containing values of complex types which are defined in the <types> section of a WSDL document. In order to do that this FC requires that (1) the Complex Types FC parameter contains the names all Java classes that implement the complex types used as parameters to the SOAP operation and (2) these Java classes' class files are located in the Java class path of Tivoli Directory Integrator.
• If an Entry is passed to this FC and the SOAP response message returned by the server is not a SOAP Fault message and there is a single output parameter of the SOAP Operation, then this FC returns the parameter in the "return" Attribute. (Due to Axis 1.1 specifics, if a SOAP operation has a single output parameter, this parameter is considered the return value of the operation. And if a SOAP operation has several output parameters, its return type is considered to be void.)
• If an Entry is passed to this FC and the SOAP response message returned by the server is not a SOAP Fault message and there are several output parameters of the SOAP Operation, then this FC returns the output parameters in Entry Attributes, whose names match the names of the SOAP Operation output parameters.
• If an Object[] with the input parameters of the SOAP operation is passed to this FC and the SOAP response message returned by the server is not a SOAP Fault message, the result is of type Object[], where the first element is the return value of the SOAP operation (null if the operation is void) and the rest are the output parameters of the operation.
  Object[] -> AxisEasyInvokeSoapWS FC -> Object[]
  
  or
  
  Entry -> AxisEasyInvokeSoapWS FC -> Entry
  
• This FC provides username and password parameters. If these parameters are specified, then the FC sets basic authorization header and sends it to the server. It encodes the supplied username and password. The used encoding method is base64 and is done inside the InvokeSoapWS FC.
• The timeout field specifies the time the invocation will wait for response. On a timeout an exception will be thrown notifying the user that the webservice did not respond in a timely fashion. The default timeout used by Axis 1.4 is 60 seconds. The timeOut parameter can accept a double value formatted to the third digit after the point and is in seconds.

See also

InvokeSoap WS Function Component