Relative WSDL soap:address location

axis2cweb serviceswsdl

Can I have the soap:address location in a WSDL relative to the WSDL location, or at least relative to the server?
For instance I want to write:

<soap:address location="https://exampleserver.com/axis2/services/ExampleService" />

as:

<soap:address location="/axis2/services/ExampleService" />

This would enable faster deployment to multiple servers, like test servers. Also, in the case of axis2c if I want my service to be used both from HTTP or HTTPS life becomes harder for developers using my service as they can't simply import the WSDL from it's default location "?WSDL".

Best Answer

The WSDL describes to clients the message formats, types, parameters etc needed to interact with the web service. This is then used by tools like WSDL2C to generate the code needed for the interaction.

But even if you expose your service on HTTP or HTTPS, the client stub code will be the same. You don't regenerate your client stubs for each endpoint address. The client stays the same, it's the access point that changes.

This address should not be hardcoded in the generated client code, it must be a configurable URL inside the client application.

Sure, you have an URL specified inside the WSDL and it's a nuisance when you deploy your web service in the dev server, and then to staging and next into production. The endpoints will be different in each environment (maybe multiplied by 2 for HTTP + HTTPS) but at this point your developers are not affected because you don't regenerate the code.

When it comes to access the web service, you would still have different addresses (for dev, staging and prod servers) even if it would be relative to something or absolute. So I don't see how it is helpful to have relative address inside the WSDL since you still have to manage the access points into the client configuration.

Related Solutions

Wcf – Asp.net Self Hosted WCF Service WSDL with relative paths

You could set the value of httpGetUrl programatically and set it to an absolute address that includes the machine name of the server of that the services are being hosted on. The import statements in the generated WSDL will then also use the machine name of the server.

If your WCF host is being created for you (for example, you are hosting under IIS) then you will need to create a custom ServiceHostFactory to get access to the ServiceHost. For example:

using System;
using System.ServiceModel;
using System.ServiceModel.Activation;
using System.ServiceModel.Description;

namespace WebApplication
{
  public class TestServiceHostFactory : ServiceHostFactory
  {
     protected override ServiceHost CreateServiceHost(Type serviceType, 
                                                      Uri[] baseAddresses)
      {
        ServiceHost host = base.CreateServiceHost(serviceType, 
                                                  baseAddresses);
        ServiceMetadataBehavior metadataBehavior = 
                                new ServiceMetadataBehavior();
        metadataBehavior.HttpGetEnabled = true;
        metadataBehavior.HttpGetUrl = new Uri(string.Format(
                              "http://{0}/WebApplication/TestService.svc", 
                              Environment.MachineName));
        host.Description.Behaviors.Add(metadataBehavior);
        return host;
      }
  }
}

You then specify this factory in the .svc file of the service:

<%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" 
                Service="WebApplication.TestService" 
                CodeBehind="TestService.svc.cs" 
                Factory="WebApplication.TestServiceHostFactory" %>

If you are creating the WCF host yourself then your code would look something like this:

ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(WebApplication.TestService));
ServiceMetadataBehavior metadataBehavior = new ServiceMetadataBehavior();
metadataBehavior.HttpGetEnabled = true;
metadataBehavior.HttpGetUrl = new Uri(string.Format(
                              "http://{0}/WebApplication/TestService.svc", 
                              Environment.MachineName));
host.Description.Behaviors.Add(metadataBehavior);

Java – How to avoid the need to specify the WSDL location in a CXF or JAX-WS generated webservice client

I finally figured out the right answer to this question today.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
    <artifactId>cxf-codegen-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${cxf.version}</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>generate-sources</id>
            <phase>generate-sources</phase>
            <configuration> 
                <sourceRoot>${project.build.directory}/generated-sources/cxf</sourceRoot>
                <wsdlOptions>
                    <wsdlOption>
                        <wsdl>${project.basedir}/src/main/resources/wsdl/FooService.wsdl</wsdl>
                        <wsdlLocation>classpath:wsdl/FooService.wsdl</wsdlLocation>
                    </wsdlOption>
                </wsdlOptions>
            </configuration>
            <goals>
                <goal>wsdl2java</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

Notice that I have prefixed the value in wsdlLocation with classpath:. This tells the plugin that the wsdl will be on the classpath instead of an absolute path. Then it will generate code similar to this:

@WebServiceClient(name = "FooService", 
                  wsdlLocation = "classpath:wsdl/FooService.wsdl",
                  targetNamespace = "http://org/example/foo") 
public class Foo_Service extends Service {

    public final static URL WSDL_LOCATION;

    public final static QName SERVICE = new QName("http://org/example/foo", "Foo");
    public final static QName FooSOAPOverHTTP = new QName("http://org/example/foo", "Foo_SOAPOverHTTP");
    static {
        URL url = Foo_Service.class.getClassLoader().getResource("wsdl/FooService.wsdl");
        if (url == null) {
            java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger(Foo_Service.class.getName())
                .log(java.util.logging.Level.INFO, 
                     "Can not initialize the default wsdl from {0}", "classpath:wsdl/FooService.wsdl");
        }       
        WSDL_LOCATION = url;
    }

Note that this only works with version 2.4.1 or newer of the cxf-codegen-plugin.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Wcf – Asp.net Self Hosted WCF Service WSDL with relative paths

Java – How to avoid the need to specify the WSDL location in a CXF or JAX-WS generated webservice client

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