How to consume a SOAP web service in Java

Question

Can someone please help me with some links and other on how to consume a web service WSDL in Java?

Answer 1

There are many options to consume a SOAP web service with Stub or Java classes created based on WSDL. But if anyone wants to do this without any Java class created, this article is very helpful. Code Snippet from the article:

public String someMethod() throws MalformedURLException, IOException {

//Code to make a webservice HTTP request
String responseString = "";
String outputString = "";
String wsURL = "<Endpoint of the webservice to be consumed>";
URL url = new URL(wsURL);
URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
HttpURLConnection httpConn = (HttpURLConnection)connection;
ByteArrayOutputStream bout = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
String xmlInput = "entire SOAP Request";

byte[] buffer = new byte[xmlInput.length()];
buffer = xmlInput.getBytes();
bout.write(buffer);
byte[] b = bout.toByteArray();
String SOAPAction = "<SOAP action of the webservice to be consumed>";
// Set the appropriate HTTP parameters.
httpConn.setRequestProperty("Content-Length",
String.valueOf(b.length));
httpConn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
httpConn.setRequestProperty("SOAPAction", SOAPAction);
httpConn.setRequestMethod("POST");
httpConn.setDoOutput(true);
httpConn.setDoInput(true);
OutputStream out = httpConn.getOutputStream();
//Write the content of the request to the outputstream of the HTTP Connection.
out.write(b);
out.close();
//Ready with sending the request.

//Read the response.
InputStreamReader isr = null;
if (httpConn.getResponseCode() == 200) {
  isr = new InputStreamReader(httpConn.getInputStream());
} else {
  isr = new InputStreamReader(httpConn.getErrorStream());
}

BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(isr);

//Write the SOAP message response to a String.
while ((responseString = in.readLine()) != null) {
outputString = outputString + responseString;
}
//Parse the String output to a org.w3c.dom.Document and be able to reach every node with the org.w3c.dom API.
Document document = parseXmlFile(outputString); // Write a separate method to parse the xml input.
NodeList nodeLst = document.getElementsByTagName("<TagName of the element to be retrieved>");
String elementValue = nodeLst.item(0).getTextContent();
System.out.println(elementValue);

//Write the SOAP message formatted to the console.
String formattedSOAPResponse = formatXML(outputString); // Write a separate method to format the XML input.
System.out.println(formattedSOAPResponse);
return elementValue;
}

For those who're looking for a similar kind of solution with file upload while consuming a SOAP API, please refer to this post: How to attach a file (pdf, jpg, etc) in a SOAP POST request?