Tips and hints when using Spring Web Services

Some things I noted while trying to set up a Spring web services application, that obeys to WS-Addressing and SoapAction headers.

• Bottom-up approach:
  
  
  
  • Write WSDL and XSD, adding soapAction descriptors and enabling WS-Addressing (see below)
  
  
  • Use JAXB to generate beans
  
  
  • Set up Spring WS configuration: marshaller, interceptors, endpoint and endpoint mapping
  
  
  • Create the endpoint class (@endpoint) and start populating it with web methods, making them match with the WSDL operations, adding annotations @Action and @SoapAction for resp. SoapAction and WS-Addressing endpoints. Use the generated beans for input/output
  
  
  
  



• When calling the application, if an "argument type mismatch" SoapFault is returned:
  
  
  
  • logically, check if you're calling the correct Action
  
  
  • sometimes it is/isn't needed to nest arguments/return parameters in a JAXBElement; if it isn't needed, this error is returned
  
  
  
  


• To make WS-Addressing work
  
  
  
  • add the WSAW namespace in the wsdl: xmlns:wsaw="http://www.w3.org/2006/05/addressing/wsdl"
  
  
  • in the same WSDL, add >wsaw:UsingAddressing wsdl:required="true"/< in the binding part. It's not needed to define Actions in the WSDL, IF you're already defining a SoapAction: as a default this one will be used for the WS-Addressing too.
  
  
  • using Spring WS annotations, add @org.springframework.ws.server.endpoint.annotation.Endpoint at the beginning of the class to declare the class as an endpoint; and for each web method, add @org.springframework.ws.soap.addressing.server.annotation.Action and
    @org.springframework.ws.soap.server.endpoint.annotation.SoapAction
    annotations on top of them, ex.
    
@SoapAction(Constants.SOAP_LOCATION_URL_CONSULTA_CONTRATO)
@Action(value=Constants.SOAP_LOCATION_URL_CONSULTA_CONTRATO)
public JAXBElement consultaContrato(final ConsultaContrato consultaContrato) {
...
}