SOAP Web Services with Java Enterprise Edition done with a Maven project

This post is an update of another post I did a few years ago before I used Maven. My goal is to create a simple SOAP Web Service and use it from a client. In theory, the main difficulty is the Maven configuration, but I found it troublesome to successfully conclude the client, due to a persistent problem with the Java versions. Hopefully I can provide some help in the process.

Server

The source code of the server is not very realistic, but this is only for illustration purposes. I wrote the server and completed all the necessary steps on the server with Java 12 and WildFly 18. For the client I was forced to use a different version. Since I am using a Maven project, I started a new project from scratch without any archetype. The project had this structure:

From here I created the Java code for the server:

import java.util.Hashtable; import java.util.Map; import javax.jws.WebMethod; import javax.jws.WebService; @WebService public class MyAgenda { private static Map<String, String> agenda = new Hashtable<>(); @WebMethod public String sayHello(String name) { return "Hello " + name; } @WebMethod public String getPhone(String name) { if (agenda.containsKey(name)) return agenda.get(name); else return null; } @WebMethod public void setPhone(String name, String phone) { agenda.put(name, phone); } }

Next, I need to write the pom.xml file. This has a few important details: the packaging, the ws dependency and the plugins that control the war packaging and the deployment on a WildFly server (keep reading if you don't use WildFly). I configured the file for it to work without a web.xml file inside the webapp directory:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>is</groupId> <artifactId>play-webservices</artifactId> <packaging>war</packaging> <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version> <name>playwebservices Maven Webapp</name> <url>http://maven.apache.org</url> <properties> <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding> <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding> </properties> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>junit</groupId> <artifactId>junit</artifactId> <version>3.8.1</version> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.sun.xml.ws/jaxws-rt --> <dependency> <groupId>com.sun.xml.ws</groupId> <artifactId>jaxws-rt</artifactId> <version>2.3.2</version> <type>pom</type> </dependency> </dependencies> <build> <finalName>play-webservices</finalName> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId> <version>3.8.1</version> <configuration> <source>12</source> <target>12</target> </configuration> </plugin> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId> <version>3.2.3</version> <configuration> <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml> </configuration> </plugin> <plugin> <groupId>org.wildfly.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>wildfly-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.0.1.Final</version> <configuration> <hostname>localhost</hostname> <port>9990</port> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> </project>

If you use WildFly, once you start the server you may then set the following maven phases:

(mvn) clean install wildfly:deploy

to compile the project, build the war file (into the target directory) and finally deploy the project in WildFly. You may skip this last step to get the war file and deploy it manually in your server (even in WildFly).

Once this is properly set up you should be something like this in the server console:

11:20:16,416 INFO  [org.jboss.ws.cxf.metadata] (MSC service thread 1-7) JBWS024061: Adding service endpoint metadata: id=MyAgenda

 address=http://localhost:8080/play-webservices/MyAgenda

 implementor=MyAgenda

 serviceName={http:///}MyAgendaService

 portName={http:///}MyAgendaPort

 annotationWsdlLocation=null

 wsdlLocationOverride=null

 mtomEnabled=false

You now may go to the browser and look for the following URL: http://localhost:8080/play-webservices/MyAgenda?wsdl

to get this result:

Client

The client, in a different project, is as simple as the server (mind a detail about Java versions below):

import artifact.MyAgenda; import artifact.MyAgendaService; public class HelloAppClient { private static MyAgendaService service = new MyAgendaService(); public static void main(String[] args) { MyAgenda agenda = service.getMyAgendaPort(); System.out.println(agenda.sayHello("world")); agenda.setPhone("Paula", "9626341"); System.out.println(agenda.getPhone("Paula")); } }

Unfortunately, it will not compile because it misses a number of classes that we must generate with the help of the wsimport tool. This brought me to a problem: wsimport ceased to exist in the newer Java versions as a standalone program (refer to my previous version of this example for additional details). We need to execute wsimport via Maven. Sadly, due to a problem I could not use Java 12 and had to revert to Java 8 (which would probably have wsimport by the way...), but kept the principle of using Maven (hopefully this will be fixed in future versions of the jaxws-maven-plugin):

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>is</groupId> <artifactId>play-webservices-client</artifactId> <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version> <properties> <maven.compiler.source>8</maven.compiler.source> <maven.compiler.target>8</maven.compiler.target> <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding> <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding> </properties> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>junit</groupId> <artifactId>junit</artifactId> <version>3.8.1</version> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.sun.xml.ws/jaxws-rt --> <dependency> <groupId>com.sun.xml.ws</groupId> <artifactId>jaxws-rt</artifactId> <version>2.3.2</version> <type>pom</type> </dependency> </dependencies> <build> <finalName>play-webservices</finalName> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId> <artifactId>jaxws-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.5</version> <executions> <execution> <goals> <goal>wsimport</goal> </goals> </execution> </executions> <configuration> <!-- The name of your generated source package --> <packageName>artifact</packageName> <wsdlUrls> <wsdlUrl> http://127.0.0.1:8080/play-webservices/MyAgenda?wsdl </wsdlUrl> </wsdlUrls> <verbose>true</verbose> <target>2.1</target> </configuration> </plugin> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId> <version>3.8.1</version> <configuration> <source>8</source> <target>8</target> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> </project>

Once we run Maven with the goal "generate-sources", we get the following additional files (in target/generated-sources/wsimport), possibly after refreshing the IDE:

We are now able to run the project and the get the following (astounding!) results:

Hello world
9626341