There are a number of products for testing SOAP web services (e.g. SOAP UI, H-P UFT, Altova) and plenty of advice on generating clients to use with a service.
We have developed an interface acting as a client to access a web service in order to exchange data with another organization.
Is there a good (reliable, recognized, configurable, stable) way of generating a dummy service to allow the client to be tested as part of an automated integration and regression testing regime.
Testing needs to be extensive, thorough and configurable.
Is there any specific programming language you are planning to use? I have recently worked with .NET's WCF framework, which allows for fast and easy creation of SOAP services. Visual Studio even includes its own (pretty simple but useful) tool for sending and receiving messages. And yes, you can test the same service using Soap Ui later on. Another StackOverflow User has already listed some good places to get started: Check it out!
For Java, you might want to check out JAX-WS. There are lots of tutorials about it on the web, here is one to get you started: JAX-WS Tutorial
Related
We are using SOAP based web services to let end user schedule service appointments. Our portal is WebService client & we have a number of Vendors(who are spread across the globe in various timezones) who are building Webservice Server operations.
We are thinking to build it as a contract first SOAP based web services so that we have tight control(interface based e.g. date-time format should be standard xsd:dateTime etc.) over what can be sent & received as part of XML messages for possible success & error scenarios(via different error codes). We want to keep single client code for all the vendors. We would like to determine
1) Should we think about using RESTful web services?
2) Is there any way the vendors can use RESTful services also if they want at their end(by sticking to our WSDL contract) & we use SOAP at our end
First a little bit about,
REST (Representation State Transfer) is an architecture style to develop webservice. In which data and functionality are considered as a resource and can be accessed via URI (Uniform Resource Indicator). It follows client server architecture and uses stateless protocol (usually HTTP). Typically in REST webserivces resources are acted upon by GET, PUT, POST,DELETE operation. Generally we use JSON to exchange data between client and server. It is light weight.
On the other hand SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a XML based mesaage protocol. Which is generally used on enterprise level to define their own interfacing and operations as services. It also follows REST architecture.
So basically, it is a RESTful webservice.
Now to answer your question,
It seems you are going to expose your webservice client on enterprise level. Which is going to be used by many vendors to implement their own webservice server.
So, it is perfect, you go with SOAP webservices.
You will define the skeleton of the webservice like Message formats, Operations, binding etc which is called WSDL. It is widely used standard and very easy to understand by any third party. Something called WADL is used for REST services also but it is not very user friendly.
The same contract (WSDL) will be used by your vendors to implement the webservice on their server in Top to Bottom approach using some API, for example JAX-WS.
This way you will have a tighter control over your operations, formats, security etc. in a single contract (WSDL).
Now if a vendor wants to use REST webservice instead of SOAP. You can build a JAVA proxy on top of your client. Which will convert your soap messages into REST to send/receive request/response to REST webservices. But you can not dictate your contract in this approach. Although, You can recommend vendors to build their own proxy to handle your SOAP webservice requests. This way your contract will be intact.
If you are going to expose your webservice client for small applications then it is alright to go with REST but if you are an enterprise and going to expand in future, you should go with SOAP for robust features and easy maintenance.
Disclaimer: please do not consider this answer as really serious.
Well, I think question too abstract. Why do you asking it? Because you see yourself that currently everything is RESTful? Then you'r right. You can do any protocol. But if you will do REST with JSON instead of XML, everybody will thank you. And if you will use 40 years old technology for creating modern service, then probably not. Same for your contractors.
The only advantage SOAP seems to have in your situation is that it is already implemented.
SOAP is a complex standard with unfriendly implementation and verbose implementation - i.e. hard to work with and maintain. Also note that you are not even using it "by the book" since your security is external to it and not using ws-security
REST based interfaces would make your and your users' lives easier. I suggest you take a look at standards and tools like swagger for building APIs.If you're running on premise you can take a look at API gateways like tyk If you're running in the cloud you also take a look at AWS API Gateway
Now I am creating an iOS application. I also implemented some web services. My requirement is : "The user should be able to call a web service API by Sending a Text Message(SMS)". After a lot of research I found out that there a provider called Clickatell(http://www.clickatell.com/). But I don't know how can I configure it? Please help me in configuring this. Or Is there any other APIs or SMS gateways providing this service?
Disclaimer, I do developer evangelism part time at Nexmo.
Here are a few SMS APIs that I've used (I've not really used Clickatell, but I've gone through the signup process, and the following APIs seem a lot simpler to use):
Nexmo
Twilio
Tropo
All three APIs are straight forward REST/HTTP APIs.
You can call the API directly from your mobile application, however, you should consider if you really want to then compile your API credentials into your application. It may be better to host a kind pf proxy that your application uses - here's some example code used as a verification service, but it's essentially the same concept: https://github.com/Nexmo/Verify
I would suggest to take a look at Mogreet's new Developer Web Site
Very easy to use REST/HTTP APIs and very powerful. It supports sending SMS/MMS with awesome quality for all media types.
I need to develope WAS application and should be hosted into Demandware platform. Can i develop the WAS application using tomcat and can host it into the Demandware or should WAS application be developed in the Demandware platform?
I am new to Demanware platform and WAS. Guide me.
You cannot build a web service outside of the UX Studio paradigm like what you described, but you can build a psuedo-service like pipeline in UX Studio that returns JSON, XML, etc. and it will work more or less just like any other REST service.
Demandware is Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, which will not allow you to access the underlying infrastructure (e.g. Tomcat server, Oracle DB, etc.) to make/install your custom extensions.
UPDATE (25.09.2015):
Currently Demandware are making extensions to their controllers, migrating from pipeleine-based controllers to script based ones. Chances are that at some point they may even introduce an API for creating web-services.
Until this happens, your only option is to make some custom pipelines and utilize something like XML/JSON over HTTP for this type of functionality. (Or if you insist on having it as SOAP based service, you would need to parse the SOAP envelopes with explicit code)
Demandware platform is a proprietary technology which allows developing only using their sandboxes and own IDE "UX Studio". All this stuff is available for demandware developers on their xchange portal. Access there could be requested by a merchant you do a development for.
Demandware has the core framework is closed to third parties and is exposed via the Demandware script and REST API's as well as Demandware's own Pipelet system.
Sadly you can't deploy external application in Demandware server, we have to separately create new app in UX studio
You can get the proper help on Demandware Wiki or on Exchange
i am new to REST Service development. I compared the development mechanism for both REST and WS web services and i found that you can create a WS web service using WSDL file that is the top down appraoch (Correct me if i am wrong) and using bottom up approach also, that is generating the classes manually.
But when it comes to REST web service development you have to follow bottom up approach only that is generating the classes manually. NetBeans IDE provides certain wizards for creating REST web service quickly from databases, entity classes and patterns.
I had also seen when you are developing web service in eclipse and you are using wizard in eclipse IDE, you can create a REST web service from WSDL file. I found this very strange. My question here is what are the approaches we can have for creating REST web services. Can we create REST web services using top-down and bottom up approached. If yes then please provide me details.
Thanks.
It is possible to describe a REST service using a contract. This is the intent of WADL and WSDL 2.0. WADL is specifically a REST contract, whereas WSDL 2.0 evolved from the original WSDL spec. to support all HTTP bindings. Since REST services rely on the use of HTTP methods and headers to exchange messages a WSDL 2.0 contract can work. There is a really good explanation here: http://ajaxonomy.com/2008/xml/web-services-part-2-wsdl-and-wadl
For development of REST services, I'm not sure if NetBeans, Eclipse or other tools specifically support automated REST service from WSDL generation. I would imagine that most are still intended for SOAP service creation. At this point I think WSDL 2.0 and WADL can be used to describe a REST service, but are not intended for automated generation of a REST service.
REST services are simple HTTP request/response,and therefore don't require complex stubs. In most cases it would probably take more time to write the WSDL describing the REST service, than it would take to write the REST service itself.
This is a general Programming question
I'm new to Java Web services programming using Apache Axis and JAX-RPC.
We need to build 2 components,a App engine (Shopping cart,
Payment Gateway integration etc..) and a UI Control Panel
over an existing API.
The API understands only XML.How we must communicate with the API?
link text
We have been asked to write a Web Service to establish the communication.
Please provide the steps and a Code example/snippet on
how to connect to an existing API through a Webservice and
get the response back from the API to the calling Webservice.
John,I hope I have been able to explain my query.If you have ideas on how to communicate with the API to get the desired result to the user,Please let us know.
We have just started our careers in technology a year back post our
graduation and this project is our very first Java EE project.
You can either develop SOAP, RPC or REST style webservices. Without knowing the problem domain, it is difficult to recommend which one is suitable for you.
If you are just talking about a registration service, the REST style might be the easiest and appropriate one for you. If you don't know what REST, this article might help you.
You can learn some good and bad practices from here. Chooing the right web framework will make your job a lot easier while developing RESTful services. So you might want to look at something like Grails.
Looks like you have already heard of Apache axis. There are nice examples in there on how to build and consume SOAP services.
So decide what exactly you are trying to build, choose the right protocol, choose the right tool and then you will learn as you go.