Question

Preface

We are providing customers with our service API.

Each customer has own subdomain (e.g. sergii.ourwebsite.com) and own WSDL URL, it looks like http://sergii.ourwebsite.com/api/bsapi.cfc?wsdl

Also, all the websites (including API, of course) using the same codebase.

Problem

Say, two applications on same CF-server. This can easily happen, because some of customer websites are hosted on our servers.

Both trying to use own API WSDL, say:

http://sergii.ourwebsite.com/api/bsapi.cfc?wsdl
http://galashyn.ourwebsite.com/api/bsapi.cfc?wsdl

And here come the problems.

When second website tries to register the web-service, CF throws an error:

Name:
https://galashyn.ourwebsite.com/api/bsapi.cfc?wsdl.
WSDL:
https://galashyn.ourwebsite.com/api/bsapi.cfc?wsdl.
org.apache.axis.wsdl.toJava.DuplicateFileException:
Duplicate file name:
/opt/coldfusion8/stubs/WS1985941973/api/Bsapi.java.
Hint: you may have mapped two
namespaces with elements of the same
name to the same package name. It is
recommended that you use a web browser
to retrieve and examine the requested
WSDL document to ensure it is correct.
If the requested WSDL document cannot
be retrieved or is dynamically
generated, it is likely that the
target web service has programming
errors.

Problem is that both of them are using same WSDL namespace, built from CFC path:

<wsdl:definitions targetNamespace="http://api">

Current solution

The only working solution for us is using the CFC aliases, like:

http://galashyn.ourwebsite.com/api/v1n1/bsapi.cfc?wsdl
http://galashyn.ourwebsite.com/api/v1n1/bsapi.cfc?wsdl

Each this CFC extends the parent like this:

<cfcomponent output="false" extends="api.bsapi">
<!--- this component used to extend base api version 1.x --->
</cfcomponent>

They produce different namespaces, which can be used without problems — own namespace for each application:

<wsdl:definitions targetNamespace="http://v1n1.api">
<wsdl:definitions targetNamespace="http://v1n2.api">

This is pretty dumb workaround, but it works for now.

Other solution would be to use the single API sub-domain and identifying the customers by some key (we are already using them for security purposes), but it has serious negative problems for us because of some legacy code.

Please note that I don’t know Java, so many specific advices are not so clear for me.

Google shows that this problem exists for years, but I can’t find the smart solution.

So maybe here?

Answer 1

I can not “place the WSDL at a common URL for all customers” for now and I’ve explained why: because I have to use the sub-domains. If you know the way to put the WSDL at one URL and make service requests to another — please tell me.

A WSDL is just an XML document that describes the web service. You can write (customize) it using CFML. For instance:

http://subdomain.domain.com/api/wsdl.cfm?api=bsapi&customer=subdomain

Then just copy the WSDL generated by CF, and use it as a template for your custom WSDL page. Replace the parts of the WSDL that are subdomain-specific and return the XML document. Be mindful of whitespace (perhaps see CFSilent, CFSetting), and consider using CFHeader to set the mime type to “text/xml”.