Apache CXF Request/Response - web-services

Question

I am working on an application that I want to use to catch a SOAP request when it goes into the CXFServlet. There is some processing I need to do to the SOAP envelope on the server side, before the CXFServlet processes it.
I have been presuming that the SOAP envelope, once it reaches the server side, is one of the parameters in the HTTPServletRequest object. But looking at what comes in (using a debugger, of course), I cannot find it.
Can someone tell me where the SOAP request goes when a client sends it to the server? I know that the client is sending the request using an HTTP POST, and I know that the server is using information in the request in order to access the appropriate web service method, then placing any return values from the method into a SOAP response and returning it to the client. What I need to know is where where does the CXFServlet (or one of its filters) look in order to get the SOAP information? Is it somewhere in the parameters? In the servlet context? Does a filter process the SOAP information before it gets to the CXFServlet? How can I get that envelope and do things to it before the web service method is called?
Someone please advise...

Answer 1

Do you want to access the original request ? If yes the actual request or response object itself can be accessed using the WebServiceContext object.
First, declare a private field for the WebServiceContext in your service implementation, and annotate it as a resource
#Resource
private WebServiceContext context;
Then, within your implementing methods, you can access the MessageContext, HttpServletRequest, and HttpServletResponse as follows:
MessageContext ctx = context.getMessageContext();
HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest)ctx.get(AbstractHTTPDestination.HTTP_REQUEST);
For more info about WebServiceContext see the following url :
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/xml/ws/WebServiceContext.html

Answer 2

If you need to intercept the request before it is ever processed by the CXFServlet, you should look at developing a Servlet Filter.
If you just want to process the SOAP message before CXF does, you can likely use a CXF Interceptor. The phases noted in the documentation indicate the points you can intercept the message. Depending on what you want to do/change, you may need to play around with the phases.
The source for CXF's SoapHeaderInterceptor or SoapActionInInterceptor would be good places to start looking at how to work with the SOAP message.