Re: Consuming an internal web service

[Scott Klement <sk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sender: Scott Klement <sk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> In example 16 the XML file content is hard-coded (fields "access 
> request" and "track request"), which might be error-prone. Instead I 
> would like to be able to use the WSDL file of the requested web service 
> in order to create the XML file content automatically, so that I can use 
> it in my RPG program..

HTTPAPI doesn't currently have that feature.  If you'd like to write one 
and contribute it, it'd be very welcome!

I've found it easy to generate SOAP documents by pointing my web browser 
at the following link:
http://www.soapclient.com/soapmsg.html

If you scroll down the page a bit, you'll find a section that says "SOAP 
Message Generator".  You can type the URL of a WSDL document, and it'll 
generate the SOAP message needed to consume it.

You can then copy/paste that SOAP message into an RPG source member, stick 
quotes around it, and use it with HTTPAPI.

This only takes me a few minutes to do.  By contrast, if I were to write a 
tool that generates the SOAP messages on-the-fly, it'd take me hundreds of 
hours to write and debug the tool.  Is it worth it?

Many of the SOAP toolkits out there (gSOAP, EasySOAP, PocketSOAP, etc) do 
the same thing.  They take the WSDL document and convert it to a SOAP 
message, and then they generate source files containing the hard-coded 
SOAP message.  The only difference between the way I'm doing it and the 
way they're doing it is that I convert the SOAP document to a source 
member manually...

> I understand that WDSC is able to do that for me, but that tool is so 
> complex, I don't know where to start (without training). is there a 
> simple way in WDSC or outside of it to use a WSDL file to create all the 
> XML file content? Can XML Toolkit for iSeries do that for me?

I've heard of WDSC's ability to do this, but I think it requires WebSphere 
and a Java front-end to RPG.  (However, I have never tried it, so I may be 
wrong.)

Since my iSeries isn't fast enough to run WebSphere, I haven't tried it.

I have absolutely no experience with the XML Toolkit for iSeries, except 
what I've heard from other people.  Every time I've seen code from this 
toolkit, it's extraordinarily complicated and hard to read, so I've stuck 
with Expat, it just seems simpler.

I don't think the XML Toolkit has anything that's SOAP or WSDL specific -- 
it's a general purpose XML toolkit.  But, since I haven't used it and 
don't own it, I could be wrong.

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