Question

I would like to learn how to use webSservices with Android.
At the moment, I have a server with the wsdl file and I am able to call a desired Webservice from.

My problem is that I got the response from the server and I would like to extract some informations which are interessant for me, for example the user id or something like that.

Here is my code:

public class TestBookSoapActivity extends Activity {

private static final String SOAP_ACTION = "JournalArticles";
private static final String METHOD_NAME = "JournalArticles";
private static final String NAMESPACE = "http://api.mdpi.com/ws/";
private static final String URL = "http://api.mdpi.com/ws/server.php";


/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);
    executeAppelSOAP();  
}

private void executeAppelSOAP() {
    SoapObject request = new SoapObject(NAMESPACE, METHOD_NAME);
    request.addProperty("JournalID", 1);
    request.addProperty("Volume", 12);
    request.addProperty("Issue", 1);

    SoapSerializationEnvelope enveloppe = new SoapSerializationEnvelope(SoapEnvelope.VER11);
    enveloppe.setOutputSoapObject(request);
    AndroidHttpTransport androidHttpTransport = new AndroidHttpTransport (URL);             
    try {
        androidHttpTransport.call(SOAP_ACTION, enveloppe);
        Object resultat = enveloppe.getResponse();
        System.out.println(" Journal Articles= " + resultat.toString());
    } catch(Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        System.out.println("Problem");
    }
}

Could I use the enveloppe.parse() method and if so, how?

Thank you.

Answer 1

There are two steps you should take:

1. Get the correct XML value
2. Parse XML

About 1…
I prefer HttpTransportSE so instead of:

AndroidHttpTransport androidHttpTransport = new AndroidHttpTransport (URL);

use:

HttpTransportSE androidHttpTransport = new HttpTransportSE(URL);

Then instead of:

Object resultat = enveloppe.getResponse();    

use:

SoapPrimitive response = (SoapPrimitive) envelope.getResponse();
String xml = response.toString();

You can also check with the debugger how response looks like. More details you can read in answers to this question.

About 2…
You can use any XML parser. I prefer SAX for performance reasons. Here is an Android example: how to parse XML in Android

Regards,
Dragan