Developing a Web Service Client using Axis2

Overview:

This article looks at how to create a service stub using Axis2 from a WSDL also know as a Web Service contract(refer here).

Pre-requisite:

Apache Axis2 1.6.1

Apache Tomcat

Apache Maven3

Sample code used can be found here.

Steps:
1. Create a project using the following,

mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=org.fazlan -DartifactId=org.fazlan.employee.service.stub -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -Dversion=1.0.0-SNAPSHOT -DinteractiveMode=false

2. Now, access the WSDL file (http://localhost:8080/axis2/services/EmployeeService?wsdl) and save as org.fazlan.employee.service.stub/src/main/resources/EmployeeService.wsdl.

3. Update the pom.xml to include the axis2 dependencies and plug-ins to generate the artifacts from the WSDL file as follows,

1: <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

2: xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">

3: <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

4: <groupId>org.fazlan</groupId>

5: <artifactId>org.fazlan.employee.service.stub</artifactId>

6: <packaging>jar</packaging>

7: <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

8: <name>org.fazlan.employee.service.stub</name>

9: <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

10: <dependencies>

11: <dependency>

12: <groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>

13: <artifactId>axis2</artifactId>

14: <version>${axis2.version}</version>

15: </dependency>

16: <dependency>

17: <groupId>wsdl4j</groupId>

18: <artifactId>wsdl4j</artifactId>

19: <version>${wsdl4j.version}</version>

20: </dependency>

21: <dependency>

22: <groupId>org.apache.ws.commons.axiom</groupId>

23: <artifactId>axiom-api</artifactId>

24: <version>${axiom.api.version}</version>

25: </dependency>

26: <dependency>

27: <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>

28: <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>

29: <version>${commons-logging.version}</version>

30: </dependency>

31: <dependency>

32: <groupId>org.apache.neethi</groupId>

33: <artifactId>neethi</artifactId>

34: <version>${neethi.version}</version>

35: </dependency>

36: <dependency>

37: <groupId>org.apache.ws.commons.schema</groupId>

38: <artifactId>XmlSchema</artifactId>

39: <version>${XmlSchema.version}</version>

40: </dependency>

41: <dependency>

42: <groupId>org.apache.ws.commons.axiom</groupId>

43: <artifactId>axiom-impl</artifactId>

44: <version>${axiom-impl.version}</version>

45: </dependency>

46: <dependency>

47: <groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>

48: <artifactId>axis2-transport-local</artifactId>

49: <version>${axis2.version}</version>

50: </dependency>

51: <dependency>

52: <groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>

53: <artifactId>axis2-transport-http</artifactId>

54: <version>${axis2.version}</version>

55: </dependency>

56: </dependencies>

57: <build>

58: <plugins>

59: <plugin>

60: <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>

61: <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>

62: <version>1.1</version>

63: <executions>

64: <execution>

65: <id>source-code-generation</id>

66: <phase>process-resources</phase>

67: <goals>

68: <goal>run</goal>

69: </goals>

70: <configuration>

71: <tasks>

72: <java classname="org.apache.axis2.wsdl.WSDL2Java" fork="true">

73: <arg line="-uri src/main/resources/EmployeeService.wsdl -u -uw -o target/generated-code

74: -p org.fazlan.employee.service.stub

75: -ns2p http://service.employee.fazlan.org=org.fazlan.employee.service.stub,http://beans.service.employee.fazlan.org/xsd=org.fazlan.employee.service.stub.beans.xsd,http://exceptions.service.employee.fazlan.org/xsd=org.fazlan.employee.service.stub.exceptions.xsd"/>

76: <classpath refid="maven.dependency.classpath"/>

77: <classpath refid="maven.compile.classpath"/>

78: <classpath refid="maven.runtime.classpath"/>

79: </java>

80: </tasks>

81: </configuration>

82: </execution>

83: </executions>

84: </plugin>

85: <plugin>

86: <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>

87: <artifactId>build-helper-maven-plugin</artifactId>

88: <executions>

89: <execution>

90: <id>add-source</id>

91: <phase>generate-sources</phase>

92: <goals>

93: <goal>add-source</goal>

94: </goals>

95: <configuration>

96: <sources>

97: <source>

98: target/generated-code/src

99: </source>

100: </sources>

101: </configuration>

102: </execution>

103: </executions>

104: </plugin>

105: </plugins>

106: </build>

107: <properties>

108: <axis2.version>1.6.1</axis2.version>

109: <wsdl4j.version>1.6.2</wsdl4j.version>

110: <commons-logging.version>1.1.1</commons-logging.version>

111: <neethi.version>2.0.4</neethi.version>

112: <axiom.api.version>1.2.12</axiom.api.version>

113: <axiom-impl.version>1.2.12</axiom-impl.version>

114: <XmlSchema.version>1.4.7</XmlSchema.version>

115: </properties>

116: </project>

4. Build the project to generate the artifacts required,

mvn clean install

The generated artifacts will be packaged in the org.fazlan.employee.service.stub-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar. You then add this jar as a dependency to the client project that needs to access the Employee Web Service.

5. Write a simple Java client (You may need to include all the axis2 dependencies to run this client).

1: import org.apache.axis2.AxisFault;

2: import org.fazlan.employee.service.stub.beans.xsd.Employee;

3: public class Main {

4: public static void main(String... args) throws Exception {

5: EmployeeServiceStub service = new EmployeeServiceStub();

6: Employee e = new Employee();

7: e.setId(1);

8: e.setFirstName("Fazlan");

9: e.setLastName("Sabar");

10: int id = service.addEmployee(e);

11: System.out.println(id);

12: Employee[] employees = service.getAllEmployees();

13: for(Employee em : employees) {

14: System.out.println(em.getId());

15: System.out.println(em.getFirstName());

16: System.out.println(em.getLastName());

17: System.out.println("---------------");

18: }

19: }

20: }

6. Sample output.

0

Fazlan

Sabar

---------------

1

Fazlan

Sabar

---------------

Summary:
This articles looked at how to generate artifacts using Axis2 with Maven3 to interact with the Web Service contract (WSDL).