Question about web service client

Question

Hi,
I am creating the a client to call non wls web serveice.
First I need to create the client jar using clientgen. My question is when i create the client jar I need the wsdl file. where is the correct place to store the wsdl file? Also I have development and production wsdl file with the different service location. Do I have to store both of the wsdl files? It's a trouble to remember to build the different client jar for development and production (using different wsdl), is there anyway that I can build the client jar once and somehow dynamically configure to use different wsdl (ie service location) in different environment? Thanks

Answer 1

Hi Holy,
If you know the WSDL hasn't changed since you used it when running the clientgen Ant task, you can just use the one that is inside the JAR that clientgen produces. To do this, you just need to not specify an argument to the XXX_Impl constructor. For instance:
AttachmentPartsService_Impl service = new AttachmentPartsService_Impl();
This has some performance benefits, because it reduces the total number of network calls, the client-side Web Services stack makes. If you specify the URL for the WSDL to the constructor (as recommended by someone else here), the client-side Web Services stack will issue an HTTP GET to get it. Now if the WSDL that is returned uses types that are different than the ones the clientgen Ant task generated classes for (i.e. the ones in the JAR generated by the clientgen Ant task), you are in trouble because the client-side Web Services doesn't generate serialization/deserialization classes (i.e. the ones in the JAR generated by the clientgen Ant task) "on-the-fly".
The service endpoint for a Web Service call can (and should) be set programmatically, from a properties or configuration file. This will look something like this in the code:
import java.util.Properties;
import javax.xml.rpc.Stub;
private static Properties loadProperties(String fileName) throws IOException
if (fileName == null || fileName.length() == 0) return null;
Properties props = new Properties();
FileInputStream fis = null;
try
fis = new FileInputStream(fileName);
props.load(fis);
finally
if (fis != null) try { fis.close(); } catch (Exception ignore){}
return props;
public static void main() throws Exception
Properties props = loadProperties("MyProperties.properties");
Client client = new Client(props);
public Client(Properties properties)
AttachmentPartsService_Impl service = new AttachmentPartsService_Impl();
AttachmentPartsServiceSoap port = service.getAttachmentPartsServiceSoap();
if (schemeHostPort == null) schemeHostPort = "http://localhost:7001";
((AttachmentPartsServiceSoap_Stub)port)._setProperty(
Stub.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY,
properties.getProperty("production.AttachmentPartsService.serviceEndpointURL"));
This way, you can have a different properties file for each environment you propagate the web service to, as opposed to saving copies of WSDL files just to have the "correct" service endpoint address. It also has the additional benefit of letting you store the service endpoint URLs for more than just one web service.
Regards,
Mike Wooten