Creating a SOAP Client Project

In this lesson, we will look at how to create a Java project with all the required dependencies for making SOAP web service calls.

Installing build tools

Please ensure JDK 8 or JRE 8 is installed on your machine as it is required by both Gradle and Maven.

Gradle

If you have a Macintosh/Linux machine and already have brew installed, you can just run the following command to install gradle.

brew install gradle

Else, you can manually install it by downloading the binary from Gradle Latest Release. To download version 6.3, use this link.

After downloading the .zip, unzip the archive file.

Macintosh/Linux

Add the following lines in ~/.profile file

export GRADLE_HOME=<unzipped gradle folder path>
export PATH=$PATH:$GRADLE_HOME/bin

Run the following command:

source ~/.profile

Windows

Run the following commands from the command prompt.

set GRADLE_HOME=<unzipped gradle folder path>
set PATH=%PATH%;%GRADLE_HOME%\bin

Maven

If you have a Macintosh/Linux machine and already have brew installed, you can just run the following command to install maven.

brew install maven

Else, you can manually install it by downloading the binary from https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi. To download version 3.6.3, use this link.

After downloading the .zip, unzip the archive file.

Macintosh/Linux

Add the following lines in ~/.profile file

export MAVEN_HOME=<unzipped maven folder path>
export PATH=$PATH:$MAVEN_HOME/bin

Run the following command:

source ~/.profile

Windows

Run the following commands from the command prompt.

set MAVEN_HOME=<unzipped maven folder path>
set PATH=%PATH%;%MAVEN_HOME%\bin

For more information on installation, please follow this link.

Creating the Java project

Macintosh/Linux users, please run the following commands to create the basic folder structure of the test project.

mkdir -p soap-client/src/{main,test}/{resources,java}

Windows

After running the above commands, the folder structure should look like this:

Creating a build file

Inside the folder, we need to create build files containing the dependencies and plugin tasks. Here, we are going to use spring-boot, spring-boot-starter-web-services and wsdl4j libraries for creating a SOAP client.

Gradle

Create a file build.gradle and copy the content below into that:

plugins {
    id 'org.springframework.boot' version '2.2.2.RELEASE'
    id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version '1.0.8.RELEASE'
    id 'java'
    id 'eclipse'
    id 'idea'
}

group = 'io.educative'
jar.baseName = 'soap-client'
version = '1.0.0-SNAPSHOT'

bootJar {
    mainClassName = ''
}

sourceCompatibility = '1.8'
targetCompatibility = '1.8'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

configurations {
    developmentOnly
    runtimeClasspath {
	    extendsFrom developmentOnly
    }
    jaxb
}

task genJaxb {
    ext.sourcesDir = "${buildDir}/generated-sources/jaxb"
    ext.classesDir = "${buildDir}/classes/jaxb"
    ext.schema = "src/main/resources/students.wsdl"

    outputs.dir classesDir

    doLast() {
        project.ant {
            taskdef name: "xjc", classname: "com.sun.tools.xjc.XJCTask",
                    classpath: configurations.jaxb.asPath
            mkdir(dir: sourcesDir)
            mkdir(dir: classesDir)

            xjc(destdir: sourcesDir, schema: schema) {
                arg(value: "-wsdl")
                produces(dir: sourcesDir, includes: "**/*.java")
            }

            javac(destdir: classesDir, source: 1.8, target: 1.8, debug: true,
                    debugLevel: "lines,vars,source", includeantruntime: false,
                    classpath: configurations.jaxb.asPath) {
                src(path: sourcesDir)
                include(name: "**/*.java")
                include(name: "*.java")
            }

            copy(todir: classesDir) {
                fileset(dir: sourcesDir, erroronmissingdir: false) {
                    exclude(name: "**/*.java")
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web-services'
    implementation 'wsdl4j:wsdl4j:1.6.1'
    jaxb("org.glassfish.jaxb:jaxb-xjc:2.2.11")
    compile(files(genJaxb.classesDir).builtBy(genJaxb))
    compile 'org.testng:testng:7.1.0'
    compile 'org.apache.commons:commons-lang3:3.9'
}

Maven

Create a file called pom.xml and copy the content below into that:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.2.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath /> 
    </parent>
    <groupId>io.educative</groupId>
    <artifactId>soap-client</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <properties>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web-services</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>wsdl4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>wsdl4j</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
            <version>3.9</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.testng</groupId>
            <artifactId>testng</artifactId>
            <version>7.1.0</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>jaxb2-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.5.0</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>xjc</id>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>xjc</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
                <configuration>
                    <sourceType>wsdl</sourceType>
                    <sources>
                        <source>${project.basedir}/src/main/resources/students.wsdl</source>
                    </sources>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

In the next lesson, we will learn how to use this web service client to make web service calls over HTTP.

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