WS-Security, WSE, Web Services, Authentication and Flex 2

Question

Hey All,
I've been working hard on getting Flex to communicate with a
Microsoft .NET 2.0 Web Services project enabled with WSE 3.0
WS-Security. I can't seem to get the headers into the SOAP request
that I need.
For example, I can get a SOAP header into the message like
so:
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsd="
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<SOAP-ENV:Header>
<ns0:Security xmlns:ns0="
http://tempuri.org/">
<ns0:password>pass</ns0:password>
<ns0:username>DOMAIN\Administrator</ns0:username>
</ns0:Security>
</SOAP-ENV:Header>
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<HelloWorld xmlns="
http://tempuri.org/" />
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
.. but, this isn't what my WSE, WS-Security enabled service
expects. Which is:
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsi="
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:wsa="
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing"
xmlns:wsse="
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"
xmlns:wsu="
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">
<soap:Header>
<wsa:Action>
http://tempuri.org/HelloWorld</wsa:Action>
<wsa:MessageID>urn:uuid:5be8b55a-df7b-4547-8def-76282fcd8b47</wsa:MessageID>
<wsa:ReplyTo>
<wsa:Address>
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing/role/anonymous</wsa:Address>
</wsa:ReplyTo>
<wsa:To>
http://localhost/CampaignMojoAPI.asmx</wsa:To>
<wsse:Security soap:mustUnderstand="1">
<wsu:Timestamp
wsu:Id="Timestamp-aab299a8-81e3-4d8a-bfa4-555f38978584">
<wsu:Created>2007-06-06T20:26:37Z</wsu:Created>
<wsu:Expires>2007-06-06T20:31:37Z</wsu:Expires>
</wsu:Timestamp>
<wsse:UsernameToken xmlns:wsu="
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"
wsu:Id="SecurityToken-b43668b1-51a3-4ba1-a90a-69eca3b98b66">
<wsse:Username>DOMAIN\Administrator</wsse:Username>
<wsse:Password Type="
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#Passwor dText">pass</wsse:Password>
<wsse:Nonce>IK4ZemfS1pj3kpdYO5+FBg==</wsse:Nonce>
<wsu:Created>2007-06-06T20:26:37Z</wsu:Created>
</wsse:UsernameToken>
</wsse:Security>
</soap:Header>
<soap:Body>
<HelloWorld xmlns="
http://tempuri.org/" />
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
I've tried "addSimpleHeader" and "addHeader", but both seem
to inject nested xml elements. Can anyone help me shape this WS
call into the format I need it in? Would it be possible to call
this WS manually via a direct HTTP post from Flex 2?
Thanks!,
Sean

Answer 1

Yeah,
Hey guys - thanks for the responses. I looked into this and
it seems no one uses WS-Security from the browser. That's why even
Google's APIs use alternative key logins, etc. I read from one user
that in the next version of Microsoft's AJAX platform that they
might support it, but that's about it. For now, it looks like
there's not even an AJAX/Javascript way to do this. If we could do
it via Javascript, then we could use the FABridge. I don't think
Flex supports it. I've tried to manipulate the headers into place
via Flex classes and I don't think enough control is there to get
the output in the form that's needed.
I think it's possible to write it in Javascript. But right
now my time budget just doesn't allow for it. I already spent two
whole days re-writing how Flex makes Web Service calls so they're
synchronous with timeouts instead of this massive amount of
asynchronous code they want you to write, so no more
re-writing/extending of components for me for a while.
But if anyone wants to work together to support it via
AJAX/Javascript, I would invest money into developing it.
I would like a public WS-Security AJAX/Javascript framework
for making these calls via WS-Security so I can offer customers a
standard way of accessing/authenticating against our public API
set. It would also make it possible for Flex to access standard web
services with WS-Security enabled.
Let me know what you guys think, or if anyone else has any
good suggestions/software.
Thanks much,
S.