Problem handling error messages in Axis

Question

I am consuming a web service, and all calls work fine. However, when the web service raises an error (for example I pass the wrong login), my Java application returns the following:
java.lang.ClassCastException: org.apache.axis.message.Text
The error soap packet that gets returned looks fine, but the Java (or Axis) can't seem to parse out the error message. I am doing a simple catch
catch(Exception e){
          System.out.print(e.getCause());
Here is an example of a Soap message it couldn't parse:
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Connection: close
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:59:50 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Type: text/xml
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 366
<SOAP:Envelope xmlns:SOAP="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<SOAP:Body>
<SOAP:Fault>
<faultcode>SOAP:Server</faultcode>
<faultstring>Unable to authenticate technician. Either the Technician ID or password is incorrect, or there is more than one technician with submitted credentials.</faultstring>
<detail>1030</detail>
</SOAP:Fault>
</SOAP:Body></SOAP:Envelope>
I've tried all versions of Axis and keep getting the same problem. Am I catching the wrong type of Exception? Does the SOAP packet look weird? Is there something special I need to do when creating the classes from the WSDL2Java? Some setting?
I don't know. Thanks.

Answer 1

The format of the SOAP Fault is valid, and can be properly deserialized using oc4j DP4 release.
Maybe you are having trouble in the processing of the detail element; the message.Text axis is complening about.
Instead of catching a generic Exception, try catching javax.xml.rpc.soap.SOAPFaultException. Then, you will have accessor for each part of the fault. Based on your sample fault, the following code:
} catch (SOAPFaultException sfe) {
System.out.println("Expected error: " + sfe.getFaultString());
outputs:
Expected error: Unable to authenticate technician. Either the Technician ID or password is incorrect, or there is more than one technician with submitted credentials.
Process exited with exit code 0.
Hope this helps,
eric