Add child elements to custom SOAP header in Spring-WS

Question

I am calling a SOAP webservice with Spring-WS. The webservice in question requires me to pass some information in the SOAP header as shown here:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
   <soapenv:Header>
      <CustomHeaderElement>
         <clientID>xyz</clientID>
         <wsdlVersion>1.0</wsdlVersion>
         <serviceType>ExampleService_v1</serviceType>
      </CustomHeaderElement>
   </soapenv:Header>
   <soapenv:Body>
   ...
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

I've figured out how to had the top level CustomHeaderElement, but I don't see anything in the Spring-WS API that allows me to add a child element. Here is what I have so far:

WebServiceTemplate template = ...;

template.marshalSendAndReceive(request, new WebServiceMessageCallback(){
    public void doWithMessage(WebServiceMessage message) throws IOException, TransformerException{
        SoapMessage soapMessage = (SoapMessage)message;
        SoapHeader soapHeader = soapMessage.getSoapHeader();
        QName qName = new QName("CustomHeaderElement");
        SOAPHeaderElement headerElement = soapHeader.addHeaderElement(qName);
        //would like to do something like headerElement.addChild(clientIdNode);
    }
});

The problem is headerElement doesn't seem to expose any means of actually adding a child. I know I can add an attribute, but that's not what I need for this service call. Does anyone know how I could add the necessary child elements to my custom header?

Answer 1

I came across the same issue, here's my solution but it will work only simple elements not for complex:

template.marshalSendAndReceive(request, new WebServiceMessageCallback(){
    public void doWithMessage(WebServiceMessage message) throws IOException, TransformerException{
        SaajSoapMessage soapMessage = (SaajSoapMessage) message;
        SoapHeaderElement messageId =  soapMessage.getSoapHeader().addHeaderElement(new QName("http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing", "MessageID", "wsa"));
        messageId.setText("urn:abcdef1234");
    }
});

it produces following XML:

<SOAP-ENV:Header>
  <wsa:MessageID>urn:abcdef1234</wsa:MessageID>
</SOAP-ENV:Header>

BTW javax.xml.soap.SOAPMessage can work too, see here: http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/5/tutorial/doc/bnbhr.html#bnbia