Question

I’m getting a problem when trying to read the response from a web service after using a POST request. I’m expecting to get some useful XML back, but instead all I am getting is HTML.

    URL url = new URL("https://abc.co.uk/someWS");
    String pKeyPassword = "xxxxxx";
    String xmlOutput = "someXML...";

    HttpsURLConnection con = (HttpsURLConnection) url.openConnection();

    //Load authentication certificate.
    KeyManagerFactory keyManagerFactory = KeyManagerFactory.getInstance("SunX509");
    KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance("PKCS12");

    InputStream keyInput = new FileInputStream("/home/keystore.p12");
    keyStore.load(keyInput, pKeyPassword.toCharArray());
    keyInput.close();

    keyManagerFactory.init(keyStore, pKeyPassword.toCharArray());

    SSLContext context = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
    context.init(keyManagerFactory.getKeyManagers(), null, new SecureRandom());

    con.setSSLSocketFactory(context.getSocketFactory());

    // Tell the connection that we will be sending information
    con.setDoInput(true);
    con.setDoOutput(true);
    con.setRequestProperty("Content-Length", "" + xmlOutput.length());
    con.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "text/xml; UTF-8");
    con.setRequestMethod("POST");

    con.connect();

    // Send the POST stream data
    DataOutputStream outputStream = new DataOutputStream(con.getOutputStream());
    outputStream.writeBytes(xmlOutput);

    // Read the response
    InputStream inputstream = con.getInputStream();
    InputStreamReader inputstreamreader = new InputStreamReader(inputstream);
    BufferedReader bufferedreader = new BufferedReader(inputstreamreader);

    // format response to a string
    String string = null;
    String response = "";
    while ((string = bufferedreader.readLine()) != null) {
      response += string;
    }
    con.disconnect();
    System.out.println(response);

I’ve been assured that there is nothing wrong with the web service I am connecting to, and apparently it looks like from their end I’m trying to do a GET request (which will return HTML) rather than a POST request. Any idea whats wrong here?

Answer 1

Suppose if you got HTML, it might be some server error. Please, read server logs to detect that issue. Anyways, you can use soapUI application to verify that your Web Service defined and work properly.

Here is snippets of code that worked for me (just add password):

import org.apache.axis.AxisFault;
import org.apache.axis.SOAPPart;
import org.apache.axis.client.Call;
import org.apache.axis.client.Service;
import org.apache.axis.message.SOAPEnvelope;
import org.apache.axis.soap.MessageFactoryImpl;
....
String mHostAddr = "yourURL";
try {

        String envelope = getXML(); //redFromXmlFile();
        //String envelope = "";
        byte[] reqBytes = envelope.getBytes();
        ByteArrayInputStream bis = new ByteArrayInputStream(reqBytes);
        StreamSource ss = new StreamSource(bis);

        //Create a SOAP Message Object
        MessageFactoryImpl messageFactory = new MessageFactoryImpl();
        SOAPMessage msg = messageFactory.createMessage();
        SOAPPart soapPart = (SOAPPart) msg.getSOAPPart();

        //Set the soapPart Content with the stream source
        soapPart.setContent(ss);

        //Create a WebService Call
        Service service = new Service();
        Call call = (Call)service.createCall();
        call.setTargetEndpointAddress(mHostAddr);

        //Invoke the WebService.
        SOAPEnvelope resp = call.invoke(((org.apache.axis.SOAPPart)soapPart).getAsSOAPEnvelope());






    } catch (AxisFault ex) {
        System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
    } catch (ServiceException ex) {
        System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
    } catch (SOAPException ex) {
        System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
    } catch (RemoteException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } 


....

It might help you or find right direction