Question

I have a custom SOAP message handler for incoming messages that will run different code based on which operation is being called. My first try to get the operation name looked something liket this:

public boolean handleMessage(SOAPMessageContext context)
{
    String op = context.get(MessageContext.WSDL_OPERATION);
    ...

This failed because the property MessageContext.WSDL_OPERATION appears to never be set. I then tried using this:

public boolean handleMessage(SOAPMessageContext context)
{
    Map<?, ?> headers = (Map<?, ?>)context.get(MessageContext.HTTP_REQUEST_HEADERS);    
    ArrayList<String> SOAPAction = ((ArrayList<String>) headers.get("SOAPAction"));
    String opName = SOAPAction.get(0);
    //opName will be formatted like "urn#myOperation", so the prefix must be removed
    opName = ((opName.replace("\"","").split("#"))[1]);

This works, but I’m concerned there could be situations where the header property “SOAPAction” isn’t set (or doesn’t even exist), or does not have the value that I’m expecting it to. I’m also a little concerned because I don’t know if this is an “official” way to get the operation name – I figured it out by looking at the contents of context in the debugger.

Is there any better way to get the operation name when handling incoming SOAP messages?

Answer 1

You could call body.getElementName().getLocalName() to retrieve the name of SOAP body element of the message payload. It’s a little bit verbose and manual but it works. You could have the following in your handler

if ((boolean) context.get(MessageContext.MESSAGE_INBOUND_PROPERTY){ //for requests only
            SOAPEnvelope msg = context.getMessage().getSOAPPart().getEnvelope(); //get the SOAP Message envelope
                SOAPBody body = msg.getBody();
            String operationName = body.getChildNodes().item(1).getLocalName();
}

The result of the above code is guaranteed to carry the name of the operation as specified in your WSDL

EDIT: This solution is based solely on the condition that the web service is implemented as document/literal-wrapped or RPC/literal