Trying to parse a Soap Message

Question

I'm working on creating webservices that will be consumed by
Director and working with the client programmer, we've come to
recognize the problem, but we don't know how to resolve it.
Problem: the XMLParser doesn't follow href parameters in tags
that refer to subobjects, which result in a #getProp Ref error.
I have a web service method that will return a list of names
and it returns the following XML response:
<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsd="
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<soapenv:Body>
<getStudentsResponse soapenv:encodingStyle="
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
<getStudentsReturn href="#id0"
/>
</getStudentsResponse>
<multiRef id="id0"
soapenc:root="0" soapenv:encodingStyle="
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
soapenc:arrayType="xsd:anyType[6]"
xsi:type="soapenc:Array" xmlns:soapenc="
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
<multiRef
xsi:type="soapenc:string">Bob B
Bobbly</multiRef>
<multiRef
xsi:type="soapenc:string">Andy A
Anderson</multiRef>
<multiRef
xsi:type="soapenc:string">Carl C
Carlson</multiRef>
</multiRef>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>
When it hits the getStudentsReturn element and tries to refer
to a child node, and obviously fails.
The server is Tomcat 5.5, using Axis 1.4 for web services. I
can post a wsdl if desired.
The web service is configured for rpc/encoded style.
What is the way to get out of this particular jam? Neither me
nor the client programmer have extensive knowledge of how Director
(or the relevant Xtra) handles SOAP messages or parse them. I've
stepped through the code and seen the XML parser object render the
response into an object tree, but it doesn't respect the href's.
I can provide follow up to any questions or comments about
this problem.
Regards,
Jeff Vandenberg

Answer 1

Hi Jeff,
While I don't have much experience with web services, I'm
about to
embark on something that involves extensive use of them, so
your post
caught my eye.
If I understand correctly, the href attribute associated with
the
getStudentsReturn node is supposed to "automatically" link to
the
following multiRef array. Is that correct?
Assuming it *did* link correctly, how would this manifest
itself? Is it
not a matter of you the parser watching for href tags and
resolving them
yourself? Why would you not simply provide the multiRef nodes
as
children of the getStudentsReturn node? Is there
documentation somewhere
for the href attribute and this form of linking?
Have you tried using the Flash Asset xtra for parsing, and
does it
behave "correctly"?