WSO2 ESB HTTP POST with form data - wso2

Question

I have a soap service that I want to turn around and post a message to an external server.
I was able to do this via curl like so:
curl --data-urlencode "filename=data.txt" --data-urlencode "filedir=/home/myfile/in"
--data-urlencode "busproc=MyBP" --data-urlencode "serverip=192.168.1.4"
--data-urlencode"uid=myuserid" --data-urlencode "pwd=mypwd"
http://somelocation.com:8833/webservice/inbound/here
But I can't quite get it working correctly. Here's my proxy service:
<proxy xmlns="http://ws.apache.org/ns/synapse"
name="ExampleHTTPPostWithFormData"
transports="http"
statistics="disable"
trace="disable"
startOnLoad="true">
<target>
<inSequence>
<log/>
<property name="messageType"
value="application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
scope="axis2"
type="STRING"/>
<property name="HTTP_METHOD" value="post" scope="axis2" type="STRING"/>
<send>
<endpoint>
<address uri="http://somelocation.com:8833/webservice/inbound/here"
format="pox"/>
<property name="uid" value="user"/>
<property name="pwd" value="password"/>
<property name="filedir" value="/home/myfile/in"/>
<property name="busproc" value="myBP"/>
<property name="serverip" value="192.168.1.4"/>
<property name="filename" value="data.txt"/>
</endpoint>
</send>
<log level="full"/>
</inSequence>
</target>
<description/>
</proxy>
The end service seems to only see me posting to the URL (but not the passed in data properties).

Answer 1

Properties are not the way to build the message content. The best way I've found to do it is with a payloadFactory. The message you need to build has a root XML element with one child per form field, and then it seems that Axis2 handles the messageType of application/x-www-form-urlencoded by serialising in the appropriate format. So a minimal change to your proxy would be:
<proxy xmlns="http://ws.apache.org/ns/synapse"
name="ExampleHTTPPostWithFormData"
transports="http"
statistics="disable"
trace="disable"
startOnLoad="true">
<target>
<inSequence>
<log/>
<property name="messageType"
value="application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
scope="axis2"
type="STRING"/>
<payloadFactory media-type="xml">
<format>
<params xmlns="">
<uid>user</uid>
<pwd>password</pwd>
<filedir>/home/myfile/in</filedir>
<busproc>myBP</busproc>
<serverip>192.168.1.4</serverip>
<filename>data.txt</filename>
</params>
</format>
</payloadFactory>
<send>
<endpoint>
<address uri="http://somelocation.com:8833/webservice/inbound/here"
format="rest"/>
</endpoint>
</send>
<log level="full"/>
</inSequence>
</target>
<description/>
</proxy>
It may also be convenient to add <property name="FORCE_HTTP_1.0" value="true" scope="axis2" type="STRING"/> depending on whether your REST service handles HTTP/1.1.
If you need parameters then you can pass in arguments to the payloadFactory, using the XPath extensions. E.g.
<payloadFactory media-type="xml">
<format>
<params xmlns="">
<uid>user</uid>
<pwd>password</pwd>
<filedir>/home/myfile/in</filedir>
<busproc>myBP</busproc>
<serverip>192.168.1.4</serverip>
<filename>$1</filename>
</params>
</format>
<args>
<arg evaluator="xml" expression="$ctx:filename"/>
</args>
</payloadFactory>

Answer 2

If your sending the SOAP payload in a file you would need to use the VFS transport. Please refer to the following sample on how to use the VFS transport to solve your issue
http://docs.wso2.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=26838852
Alternatively you can use SOAPUI or any SOAP client to send the payload directly to the ESB proxy endpoint