Adding attachments to web service

Question

Hi,
I am working on a project which requires me to add pictures as attachments of a web service.
This is what I do:
messageContext = endpointContext.getMessageContext();
SOAPMessageContext soapContext = (SOAPMessageContext) messageContext;
SOAPMessage msg = soapContext.getMessage();
//URL url = new URL("file:///attachments/jhe061.gif");
URL url = new URL("http://www.google.ro/images/hp0.gif");
DataHandler dataHandler = new DataHandler(url);
AttachmentPart attachment = msg.createAttachmentPart(dataHandler, "image/gif");
attachment.setContentId("image/gif");
msg.addAttachmentPart(attachment);
According to the J2EE tutorial, an image attachment should be added to the service. On the client side no sign of a multipart is found....
Could anybody tell me what I do wrong?
Thanks, d3m0

Answer 1

Attachment support for webservices is not defined using the mime binding in the
current jaxrpc1.1 implementation. It is done in an implementation specific manner.
See the jaxrpc1.1 specfication chapter 7 where it talks about SOAP messages with
attachments. This is optional functionality in the jaxrpc1.1 release.
In jaxrpc1.1.2 (a follow on release) support for WS-I Attachment Profile1.0 is
in this release defined via the wsdl mime binding. You can get this release by
downloading the JWSDP1.4 release. This contains the required attachment support
you need for handling attachments in webservices in a portable way. To create
a webservice with attachments using this release is quite easy. You simply
define your attachments in your wsdl using the wsdl mime binding. You can send
attachments to a webservice in the SOAP request by defining the mime binding
on the operation input and you can get attachments back from the webservice by
defining the mime binding on the operation output. You will need to look at
at the WS-I Attachment Profile 1.0 Specification to see how this is done.
Also look at the documentation and release notes for the JWSDP1.4 release.
Here is an example of the mime binding for a webservice operation on the
output.
<binding name="SwaTestSoapBinding1" type="tns:SwaTest1">
<soap:binding transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http" style="rpc"/>
<operation name="getMultipleAttachments">
<soap:operation/>
<input>
<soap:body parts="request" use="literal" namespace="http://SwaTestService.org/wsdl"/>
</input>
<output>
<mime:multipartRelated>
<mime:part>
<soap:body parts="response" use="literal" namespace="http://SwaTestService.org/wsdl"/>
</mime:part>
<mime:part>
<mime:content part="attach1" type="text/plain"/>
</mime:part>
<mime:part>
<mime:content part="attach2" type="text/html"/>
</mime:part>
</mime:multipartRelated>
</output>
</operation>
An example of using attachments in jaxrpc1.1:
To do attachments in jaxrpc1.1 you can start from java and develop an SEI with
signatures as follows:
Sample SEI
package attachmentstest;
import java.rmi.Remote;
import java.rmi.RemoteException;
import java.awt.Image;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMultipart;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.activation.DataHandler;
import java.util.*;
// Service Defintion Interface - as outlined in JAX-RPC Specification
public interface AttachmentsTest extends Remote {
public Image echoImage(Image v) throws RemoteException;
public Image[] echoImageArray(Image[] v) throws RemoteException;
public MimeMultipart echoMimeMultipart(MimeMultipart v) throws RemoteException;
public MimeMultipart[] echoMimeMultipartArray(MimeMultipart[] v) throws RemoteException;
public Source echoSource(Source v) throws RemoteException;
public Source[] echoSourceArray(Source[] v) throws RemoteException;
public DataHandler echoDataHandler(DataHandler v) throws RemoteException;
public DataHandler[] echoDataHandlerArray(DataHandler[] v) throws RemoteException;
Sample Client
private boolean dataHandlerTest() {
     TestUtil.logMsg("AttachmentsTest:(dataHandlerTest)");
     boolean pass = true;
     DataHandler response;
try {
DataHandler dataHandler = new DataHandler(sourceFileURL);
     TestUtil.logMsg("Test request/response of DataHandler ...");
     TestUtil.logMsg("dataHandler="+dataHandler);
     response = port.echoDataHandler(dataHandler);
     if (!(response.getContent().equals(dataHandler.getContent()))) {
          TestUtil.logErr("DataHandler comparison mismatch");
          pass = false;
} catch (Exception e) {
     TestUtil.logErr("Caught exception: " + e.getMessage());
TestUtil.printStackTrace(e);
     pass = false;
     printTestStatus(pass, "AttachmentsTest:(dataHandlerTest)");
     return pass;
private boolean sourceTest() {
     TestUtil.logMsg("AttachmentsTest:(sourceTest)");
     boolean pass = true;
     Source response;
try {
Source source = new StreamSource(xmlFileURL.openStream());
     TestUtil.logMsg("Test request/response of Source ...");
     response = port.echoSource(source);
     // Code for comparison here
} catch (Exception e) {
     TestUtil.logErr("Caught exception: " + e.getMessage());
TestUtil.printStackTrace(e);
     pass = false;
     printTestStatus(pass, "AttachmentsTest:(sourceTest)");
     return pass;