Returning table structure from Web Service...

Question

Hi,
I have a web service which retrieves data from a database table. I want to use this web service from my Visual Composer to display the data on the screen.
I want to know how to return the table structure from my web service. Currently i am returning a string array (only one row of data) from my web service and displaying it in the VC. But i want to include the names of the columns as well.
I tried using 2D String[] and HashMap, both didn't work for me.
Any ideas?
Regards,
Venkat

Answer 1

Hi Venkat,
I recommend to pass the headers in seperat variables and the data table in a array.
I did something similar, without the header, because they are fixed in my scenario.
This webservice returns a list of all Portal Roles:
     public roleModel[] getRoles() throws Exception{
               // Array List as return value
               ArrayList RoleList = new ArrayList();
               // Try Block reading portal roles
               try {
                    IRoleFactory rfact = UMFactory.getRoleFactory();
                    // Filter for PortalRoles
                    IRoleSearchFilter roleFilter = rfact.getRoleSearchFilter();
                    // Search for *
                    roleFilter.setUniqueName("*", ISearchAttribute.EQUALS_OPERATOR, false);
                    // Search all Roles
                    ISearchResult resultList = rfact.searchRoles(roleFilter);
                    // return the result list
                    if (resultList.getState() == ISearchResult.SEARCH_RESULT_OK) {
                         while (resultList.hasNext()) {
                              // read roleUid
                              String roleUid = (String) resultList.next();
                              // create roleObject for roleUid
                              IRole roleObject =     rfact.getRole(roleUid);
                              //  instantiate new role for  ArrayList
                              roleModel rolle = new roleModel();
                              // read DisplayName and UniqeID
                              rolle.setRole(roleObject.getDisplayName());
                              rolle.setRoleID(roleObject.getUniqueID());
                              rolle.setDescription(roleObject.getDescription());
                              // add object to ArrayList
                              RoleList.add(rolle);
                    // create new array from data type model roleModel (class)
                    // in the correspoding size
                    roleModel[] returnList = new roleModel[RoleList.size()];
                    // write ArrayList back to array
                    RoleList.toArray(returnList);
                    // return all portal roles
                    return returnList;
               // exception handling
               } catch (Exception e) {
                    throw new Exception(e);
Hope that helps!
Best Regards,
Marcel