SOAPAction - Not Needed, But No Way to Remove It

This section describes why the SOAPAction header line is not needed in SOAP 1.2 - SOAPAction is replaced by the 'action' parameter of the application/soap-xml media type in SOAP 1.2.

According to RFC 3902 - 'The "application/soap+xml" media type', the SOAPAction HTTP header field in SOAP 1.1 has been replaced by the "action" parameter of the media type:

MIME media type name: application
MIME subtype name: soap+xml
Required parameters: none
Optional parameters:

"charset": This parameter has identical semantics to the charset
   parameter of the "application/xml" media type as specified in
   RFC 3023 [RFC3023].

"action": This optional parameter can be used to specify the URI
   that identifies the intent of the message.  In SOAP 1.2, it
   serves a similar purpose as the SOAPAction HTTP header field
   did in SOAP 1.1.  Namely, its value identifies the intent of
   the message.
...

So how to remove SOAPAction HTTP header with using SOAP::Lite? I did some research on the Internet, and found no suggestions. So I decided to leave it there. But it needs to be modified to make the .NET Web services server happy. Because they require a format of "$uri/$method", not "$uri#$method".

The solution is easy as we learned from previous SOAP 1.1 tutorials. The on_action() function can be used to provide a call back function to control the value of SOAPAction:

#- NumberToWords_localhost_SOAPAction.pl
#- Copyright (c) 2009 HerongYang.com. All Rights Reserved.
#
   use SOAP::Lite +trace;
   my $client = SOAP::Lite->new()
      ->soapversion('1.2')
      ->envprefix('soap12')
      ->default_ns('http://www.dataaccess.com/webservicesserver/')
      ->on_action( sub {join '', @_} )
      ->readable(true)
      ->proxy('http://localhost/NumberConversion.wso');

   my $som = $client->call('NumberToWords', 
      SOAP::Data->name("ubiNum")
      ->value(102));

Result of NumberToWords_localhost_SOAPAction.pl:

POST http://localhost/NumberConversion.wso HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/xml
Accept: multipart/*
Accept: application/soap
Content-Length: 609
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
SOAPAction: http://www.dataaccess.com/webservicesserver/NumberToWords

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap12:Envelope
    soap:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
    xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
    xmlns:soap12="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"
    xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <soap12:Body>
    <NumberToWords xmlns="http://www.dataaccess.com/webservicesserver/">
      <ubiNum xsi:type="xsd:int">102</ubiNum>
    </NumberToWords>
  </soap12:Body>
</soap12:Envelope>

I think my entire NumberToWords SOAP 1.2 request is ready now. What do you think?

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

 SOAP MEP (Message Exchange Patterns)

 SOAP HTTP Binding

 SOAP PHP Implementations

 PHP SOAP Extension Client Programs

 PHP SOAP Extension Server Programs

 PHP SOAP Web Service Example - getTemp

 SOAP Perl Implementations

 Perl SOAP::Lite - SOAP Server-Client Communication Module

 Perl Socket Test Program for HTTP and SOAP

 Perl SOAP::Lite for NumberToWords SOAP 1.1 Web Service

Perl SOAP::Lite for SOAP 1.2 Web Services

 Message Styles Supported in SOAP::Lite

 Methods on SOAP::Lite Client Object

 Testing SOAP::Lite Client Objects

 Differences between SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2

 NumberToWords_localhost.pl - Testing on Local Host

 soapversion('1.2') and envprefix('soap12') Must Used Together

 default_ns() - Setting Namespace for Body Elements

 SOAP::Data - Utility Class to Generate XML Elements

SOAPAction - Not Needed, But No Way to Remove It

 NumberToWords_SOAP_1_2.pl - SOAP::Lite for SOAP 1.2 Web Service

 Perl SOAP::Lite for WSDL

 Python SOAP Client: Zeep

 SOAP Java Implementations

 Java Socket and HttpURLConnection for SOAP

 SAAJ - SOAP with Attachments API for Java

 SoapUI - SOAP Web Service Testing Tool

 WS-Security - SOAP Message Security Extension

 WS-Security X.509 Certificate Token

 Perl SOAP::Lite for GetSpeech SOAP 1.1 Web Service

 Perl SOAP::Lite 0.710 for SOAP 1.2 Web Services

 Perl SOAP::Lite 0.710 for WSDL

 Web Services and SOAP Terminology

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB