.NET & Java Architecture Lessons: December 2012

This entry shows how to create a simple Web service based on JAX-WS. The eclipse project is a Maven project and therefore the following elements are necessary to implement this:

1) Maven 3.0.4.

2) JUnit 4.0

3) JDK 1.5

4) JAX-WS 2.2.6

5) SOAP UI testing tool.

6) Jboss Application Server 6.1

This first view of a web service implementation conveys only a simple operation but It is a good first movement to show how the JAX-WS is and the way that a simple web service can be implemented.

From an architecture point of view, this very simple example highlights the lightweight implementation without bearing in mind the contract and contract coding decoupled approach.

This article outlines the following stages.

1) Eclipse Maven project creation.

2) JAX-WS –based web service implementation.

3) Web Service package generation.

4) Jboss web service deployment.

5) Verifying the web service deployment

6) Testing the Web Services by using SOAP UI TestSuite.

Description of every step

First stage. Eclipse Maven project creation.

Before creating a new maven project, eclipse maven must be installed thoroughly. I assume that you have already installed the plugin with no problems.

In order to create the eclipse project, click the new project and in the Maven folder select the Maven Project option and click “next” button.

In this case, I have decided to create a non-archetype project; therefore I have checked the “create a simple project” option.

The result is a new eclipse project respecting the maven directory structure as following

Second stage. JAX-WS –based web service implementation.

Firstly, I have added several maven dependencies to the pom.xml maven file located in the root of the project.

<groupId>greeting.services.com</groupId>

<artifactId>GreetingWS</artifactId>

<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

<name>GreetingWS</name>

<dependencies>

<dependency>

<groupId>com.sun.xml.ws</groupId>

<artifactId>jaxws-rt</artifactId>

<version>2.2.6</version>

</dependency>

<dependency>

<groupId>junit</groupId>

<artifactId>junit</artifactId>

<version>4.10</version>

</dependency>

</dependencies>

</project>

JAX-WS and JUnit dependencies are added. Please, do be aware that in this case JUnit are not to be used but it is important for future JAX-WS examples based on this first approach.

Once the file is saved, immediately the maven engine search the dependencies within the repositories configured and download them into the local maven repository.

Now, it is time to create the Web service class. For doing this, you can create a file source like this.

package com.greeting.ws;

import javax.jws.WebService;

import javax.jws.soap.SOAPBinding;

import javax.jws.soap.SOAPBinding.Style;

@WebService

@SOAPBinding(style=Style.RPC)

public class GreetingWS {

public String formalGreeting(String name){

return "Hello boy :" + name;

}

As you can see, several issues are worth being commented.

Firstly, the “import” include in the source file the dependencies needed to use @WebService attribute and @SOABinding.

If you want your class to behave such as a Web service class, you must use both attributes.

@WebService attribute establishes the class as a web service in itself.

@SOAPBinding determinates the SOAP style, in this case RPC style (Document style is permitted as well).

As you can see, you do not need to draw on extra attributes to establish the methods of this class as web service methods.

Finally, two files are need and you must add to the project under the WEB-INF folder.

web.xml is the common web specification file all web-based applications must comprise.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"

xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"

id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5">

<display-name>greetingExample</display-name>