XFire WebService With Spring | {"Mat's Random Thoughts"}

Tried setting up XFire with Spring and thought I’d share that experience. One more place to come for this information will not hurt ah!

Once again I used Maven to build my test application. At the bottom of this article you will find a download link for the entire application.

I have used Axis in the past and wanted to try out some other frameworks. At the same time I absolutely needed the framework to support JSR 181 (web service annotations), required the framework to integrate with Spring and relatively simple configuration. Oh also I did not want to write any WSDL. This example is an RPC based web service (unlike my previous article on document based web service with Spring-WS). I will after this article also start using Axis2, since I have been an Axis fan for many years.

JSR 181 is important to me. I think annotations are the right way to go for most simple tasks that do not require a lot of input. The web service annotations are good example about where annotations are the right fit. I have seen examples of annotations where it would be far easier and clearer to put it into the XML style configuration. Some folks are anti-annotations and I think that attitude is not the best. Use it where it makes the most sense.

Lets view the echo service java POJO code.

1:  package com.aver;
2:    public interface EchoService {
3:    public String printback(java.lang.String name);
4:   }

1: package com.aver;

2: public interface EchoService {

3: public String printback(java.lang.String name);

4: }

1:  package com.aver;
2:  import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
3:  import java.util.Calendar;
4:  import javax.jws.WebMethod;
5:  import javax.jws.WebParam;
6:  import javax.jws.WebResult;
7:  import javax.jws.WebService;
8:  @WebService(name = "EchoService", targetNamespace ="http://www.averconsulting.com/services/EchoService")
9:  public class EchoServiceImpl implements EchoService {
10:    @WebMethod(operationName = "echo",action = "urn:echo")
11:    @WebResult(name = "EchoResult")
12:    public String printback(@WebParam(name ="text") String text) {
13:       if (text== null || text.trim().length() == 0) {
14:        return "echo: -please provide a name-";
15:       }
16:       SimpleDateFormat dtfmt = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy hh:mm:ss a");
17:       return "echo: '" + text + "' received on " + dtfmt.format(Calendar.getInstance().getTime());
18:    }
19:  }

1: package com.aver;

2: import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

3: import java.util.Calendar;

4: import javax.jws.WebMethod;

5: import javax.jws.WebParam;

6: import javax.jws.WebResult;

7: import javax.jws.WebService;

8: @WebService(name = "EchoService", targetNamespace ="http://www.averconsulting.com/services/EchoService")

9: public class EchoServiceImpl implements EchoService {

10: @WebMethod(operationName = "echo",action = "urn:echo")

11: @WebResult(name = "EchoResult")

12: public String printback(@WebParam(name ="text") String text) {

13: if (text== null || text.trim().length() == 0) {

14: return "echo: -please provide a name-";

15: }

16: SimpleDateFormat dtfmt = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy hh:mm:ss a");

17: return "echo: '" + text + "' received on " + dtfmt.format(Calendar.getInstance().getTime());

18: }

19: }

As you can see above I have made liberal use of JSR 181 web service annotations.

@WebService declares the class as exposing a web service method(s).
@WebMethod declares the particular method as being exposed as a web service operartion.
@WebParam gives easy-to-read parameter names which will show up in the auto-generated WSDL. Always provide these for the sake of your consumers sanity.
Also you can see that the java method is named ‘printback’ but exposed as name ‘echo’ by the @WebMethod annotation.

Here is the web.xml.

1:  &lt;?xmlversion="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?&gt;
2:  &lt;!DOCTYPE web-app
3:  PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTDWeb Application 2.3//EN"
4:  "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd"&gt;
5:  &lt;web-app&gt;
6:     &lt;context-param&gt;
7:       &lt;param-name&gt;contextConfigLocation&lt;/param-name&gt;
8:       &lt;param-value&gt;classpath:org/codehaus/xfire/spring/xfire.xml/WEB-INF/xfire-servlet.xml&lt;/param-value&gt;
9:     &lt;/context-param&gt;
10:    &lt;listener&gt;
11:       &lt;listener-class&gt;org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener&lt;/listener-class&gt;
12:    &lt;/listener&gt;
13:    &lt;servlet&gt;
14:       &lt;servlet-name&gt;XFireServlet&lt;/servlet-name&gt;
15:       &lt;servlet-class&gt;org.codehaus.xfire.spring.XFireSpringServlet&lt;/servlet-class&gt;
16:    &lt;/servlet&gt;
17:    &lt;servlet-mapping&gt;
18:       &lt;servlet-name&gt;XFireServlet&lt;/servlet-name&gt;
19:       &lt;url-pattern&gt;/servlet/XFireServlet/*&lt;/url-pattern&gt;
20:    &lt;/servlet-mapping&gt;
21:     &lt;servlet-mapping&gt;
22:       &lt;servlet-name&gt;XFireServlet&lt;/servlet-name&gt;
23:       &lt;url-pattern&gt;/services/*&lt;/url-pattern&gt;
24:     &lt;/servlet-mapping&gt;
25:  &lt;/web-app&gt;

1: <?xmlversion="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

2: <!DOCTYPE web-app

3: PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTDWeb Application 2.3//EN"

4: "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd">

5: <web-app>

6: <context-param>

7: <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>

8: <param-value>classpath:org/codehaus/xfire/spring/xfire.xml/WEB-INF/xfire-servlet.xml</param-value>

9: </context-param>

10: <listener>

11: <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>

12: </listener>

13: <servlet>

14: <servlet-name>XFireServlet</servlet-name>

15: <servlet-class>org.codehaus.xfire.spring.XFireSpringServlet</servlet-class>

16: </servlet>

17: <servlet-mapping>

18: <servlet-name>XFireServlet</servlet-name>

19: <url-pattern>/servlet/XFireServlet/*</url-pattern>

20: </servlet-mapping>

21: <servlet-mapping>

22: <servlet-name>XFireServlet</servlet-name>

23: <url-pattern>/services/*</url-pattern>

24: </servlet-mapping>

25: </web-app>

The web.xml configures the ‘XFireSpringServlet‘ and sets up the Spring listener. Straightforward.

Finally here is the xfire-servlet.xml (this is our spring configurationfile).

1:  &lt;bean id="webAnnotations" class="org.codehaus.xfire.annotations.jsr181.Jsr181WebAnnotations"/&gt;
2:  &lt;bean id="jsr181HandlerMapping"xfire_echo.jar class="org.codehaus.xfire.spring.remoting.Jsr181HandlerMapping"&gt;
3:     &lt;property name="typeMappingRegistry"&gt;
4:       &lt;refbean="xfire.typeMappingRegistry" /&gt;
5:     &lt;/property&gt;
6:     &lt;property name="xfire" ref="xfire" /&gt;
7:     &lt;property name="webAnnotations" ref="webAnnotations" /&gt;
8:  &lt;/bean&gt;
9:  &lt;bean id="echo"class="com.aver.EchoServiceImpl" /&gt;
10:  &lt;/beans&gt;

1: <bean id="webAnnotations" class="org.codehaus.xfire.annotations.jsr181.Jsr181WebAnnotations"/>

2: <bean id="jsr181HandlerMapping"xfire_echo.jar class="org.codehaus.xfire.spring.remoting.Jsr181HandlerMapping">

3: <property name="typeMappingRegistry">

4: <refbean="xfire.typeMappingRegistry" />

5: </property>

6: <property name="xfire" ref="xfire" />

7: <property name="webAnnotations" ref="webAnnotations" />

8: </bean>

9: <bean id="echo"class="com.aver.EchoServiceImpl" />

10: </beans>

Sets up the xfire bean to recognize jsr 181 annotations.
Last bean is our echo service implementation bean (withannotations).

That is it. Build and deploy this and you should see the WSDL at http://localhost:9090/echoservice/services/EchoServiceImpl?wsdl.

Click here to download the Maven based project code. To build run:

mvn package
mvn jetty:run