Question

I’m implementing a web service client using JAX-WS over SOAP. Its error codes are returned in the following way:

<?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?>
<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema">
   <env:Header>
      <!-- header stuff goes here -->
   </env:Header>
   <env:Body>
      <env:Fault>
        <abc:fault xmlns:abc="http://example.com/abc">
           <abc:faultcode>12345</abc:faultcode>
           <abc:faultstring>Error message goes here</abc:faultstring>
        </abc:fault>
     </env:Fault>
   </env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

As far as I know, this is not the correct way to do SOAP faults. The subelements of a env:Fault should be <faultcode> and <faultstring>, not a different namespaced <fault>. Unfortunately, I have no way of making the web service change this.

My hope was that I would be able to parse this message in a SOAPHandler and transform it into a regular fault before passing it on to the rest of my code, however when I logged the message in an earlier Handler I saw that the Fault element completely empty. The <abc:fault> was gone!

I’m using JAX-WS on WebSphere 7 and I’ve tried setting “jaxws.payload.highFidelity” to true in my system properties. Any clues on to how to get at the original message?

Leaving this alone will cause a WebServiceException with a NullPointerException because JAX-WS can’t find the faultcode.

Answer 1

So I found the answer to my question. WebSphere 7 uses Axis2. Axis2’s MessageContext provides a property called “TRANSPORT_IN” which contains a ByteArrayInputStream. TRANSPORT_IN, as the name implies, contains the exact SOAP message received.

I parsed through the original SOAP message in my Handler#handleFault method using a SAXHandler to retrieve the abc:fault message. I then wrote the abc:fault > faultcode and faultstring to the soapenv:Fault faultcode and faultstring. My application then handles the SOAPFaultException as if it was a normal one.

I’m still very open to any better answers since this feels like roundabout way to do this.

Handler Code:

public boolean handleFault(SOAPMessageContext context) {
    SOAPMessage m = context.getMessage();
    if(m != null) {
        SOAPBody body = m.getSOAPBody();
        SOAPFault fault = body.getFault();
        setAbcFault(fault, context);
    }
}

private void setAbcFault(SOAPFault fault, MessageContext context) {
    ByteArrayInputStream bis = (ByteArrayInputStream)context.get("TRANSPORT_IN");
    // do sax parsing on the input stream
    fault.setFaultCode(abcFaultCodeQName);
    fault.setFaultString(abcFaultString);
}