addHeader() - Setting SOAPAction Header Line

SOAP Web Service Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟SAAJ - SOAP with Attachments API for Java

∟addHeader() - Setting SOAPAction Header Line

This section provides a tutorial example on how to use the MimeHeaders class and the addHeader() method to add the SOAPAction header line for the final HTTP request.

From previous tutorials, we learned enough to generated a working SOAP XML message with simple body element under specific namespace.

One thing left to make a SOAP 1.1 HTTP post is the required SOAPAction header line, which can be generated by using these methods.

1. Assuming "request" is the new SOAPMessage object, we need to get hold of the MimeHeaders object with the getMimeHeaders() method:

   MimeHeaders headers =msg.getMimeHeaders();

2. Then we need to add the SOAPAction header line with the addHeader() method:

   headers.addHeader("SOAPAction", action);

Here is my testing program for adding SOAPAction header line:

/**
 * SOAPMessageGetMimeHeaders.java
 * Copyright (c) 2009 by Dr. Herong Yang, herongyang.com
 * All rights reserved
 */
import java.io.*;
import javax.xml.soap.*;
public class SOAPMessageGetMimeHeaders {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      PrintStream out = System.out;

// Checking command line arguments
      if (args.length < 1) {
         out.println("Usage:");
         out.println("java SOAPMessageGetMimeHeaders url");
         return;
      }
      String sURL = args[0];

      try {
// Creating a new empty SOAP message object
         SOAPMessage reqMsg
            = MessageFactory.newInstance().createMessage();

// Populating SOAP body
         String prefix = "tns";
         String uri = "http://xmlme.com/WebServices";
         SOAPEnvelope envelope = reqMsg.getSOAPPart().getEnvelope();
         SOAPBody body = envelope.getBody();
         SOAPBodyElement service = body.addBodyElement(
            envelope.createName("GetSpeech", prefix, uri));
         SOAPElement param = service.addChildElement(
            envelope.createName("Request", prefix, uri));
         param.addTextNode("To be, or not to be");

// Setting SOAPAction header line
         MimeHeaders headers = reqMsg.getMimeHeaders();
         headers.addHeader("SOAPAction", uri+"/GetSpeech");

// Connecting and calling
	 SOAPConnection con 
	    = SOAPConnectionFactory.newInstance().createConnection();
         SOAPMessage resMsg = con.call(reqMsg, sURL);
         con.close();
         if (resMsg != null) out.println("Response received!");
      } catch (Exception e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      }
   }
}

Remember that I need to run my socket server test program first to capture the entire HTTP request:

\herong>java SocketRequestResponseServer soap_1_1_server.res
   server.req

Listening at 8888

Now run SOAPMessageGetMimeHeaders.java in another command window:

\herong>java SOAPMessageGetMimeHeaders http://localhost:8888
Response received!

Go back to the first command window:

\herong>java SocketRequestResponseServer soap_1_1_server.res
   server.req

Listening at 8888
Connection received from /127.0.0.1
Request length: 584
Response length: 391

\herong>type server.req
POST / HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/xml, text/html, image/gif, image/jpeg, *; q=.2, */*; q=.2
SOAPAction: http://xmlme.com/WebServices/GetSpeech
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 265
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
User-Agent: Java/1.6.0_06
Host: localhost:8888
Connection: keep-alive

<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
  xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <SOAP-ENV:Header/>
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <tns:GetSpeech xmlns:tns="http://xmlme.com/WebServices">
      <tns:Request>To be, or not to be</tns:Request>
    </tns:GetSpeech>
  </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

The SOAPAction header line is correctly generated in the final HTTP request.

Last update: 2009.

Table of Contents

About This Book

Introduction to Web Service

Introduction to SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

SOAP Message Structure

SOAP Message Transmission and Processing

SOAP Data Model

SOAP Encoding

SOAP RPC Presentation

SOAP Properties Model