Problem with web service that returns an object with a String that have som

Question

Hi everybody:
I have a problem with a web service I am doing, I have made a web service that returns a collection of objects, the objects have a set of properties, there is one property that is a String,this property consists in a text fragment that could have some characters that are considered special in XML like &, <, >, " and that's why when I execute the service from a client an exception is thrown:
{code}
Exception in thread "main" org.codehaus.xfire.XFireRuntimeException: Could not invoke service.. Nested exception is org.codehaus.xfire.fault.XFireFault: Could not read XML stream.. Nested exception is com.ctc.wstx.exc.WstxParsingException: Expected a text token, got START_ELEMENT.
at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [9,646]
org.codehaus.xfire.fault.XFireFault: Could not read XML stream.. Nested exception is com.ctc.wstx.exc.WstxParsingException: Expected a text token, got START_ELEMENT.
at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [9,646]
at org.codehaus.xfire.fault.XFireFault.createFault(XFireFault.java:89)
at org.codehaus.xfire.client.Client.onReceive(Client.java:410)
at org.codehaus.xfire.transport.http.HttpChannel.sendViaClient(HttpChannel.java:139)
at org.codehaus.xfire.transport.http.HttpChannel.send(HttpChannel.java:48)
at org.codehaus.xfire.handler.OutMessageSender.invoke(OutMessageSender.java:26)
at org.codehaus.xfire.handler.HandlerPipeline.invoke(HandlerPipeline.java:131)
at org.codehaus.xfire.client.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:79)
at org.codehaus.xfire.client.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:114)
at org.codehaus.xfire.client.Client.invoke(Client.java:336)
at org.codehaus.xfire.client.XFireProxy.handleRequest(XFireProxy.java:77)
at org.codehaus.xfire.client.XFireProxy.invoke(XFireProxy.java:57)
at $Proxy0.search(Unknown Source)
at cu.co.cenatav.webservices.client.Client.main(Client.java:26)
{code}
I know that this is happening because special characters are sent by the soap message but I don't know how to solve this problem.
How could I avoid this exception ?
I hope you can help me.
Regards.
Ariel

Answer 1

Hi,
BPEL and BPEL PM do not have a good support for SOAPENC-Array: it would be very difficult to create such an array in BPEL or to receive it and manipulate it.
The (unfortunately very intrusive) work around is to change the WSDL of the service to use a XML type defined using XML schema. This is all the more painful that JDev 9.0.4 does not have strong support for complex types.
In general though, I would highly recommend this best practice:
1) Start by define the WSDL contract first
2) Then generate the server side skeleton to implement it
3) Use BPEL as the client to this contract.
By starting with the contract first, you make sure that 1) your interfaces are clean and coarse grained.
2) things like java objects, sessions, etc to not leak through the interface (which would be the worst thing that could happen because it would closely link the client and the server.
Sorry for not being more helpful. This will get radically cleaner in Oracle AS 10.1.3.
Edwin