MuleSoft Consuming Soap Web Service - CXF Proxy-Client Module

1. CONSUMING SOAP WEB SERVICE
- MULESOFT CXF PROXY-CLIENT MODULE
Vince Jason Soliza

2. MuleSoft CXF Proxy Client Module
When using CXF inside of Mule, there are
several different ways to consume web service.
One is the Proxy Client: Unlike jax-ws-client that
oblige to use JAXB-Objects, this one could work
directly with XML when consuming web
services.

3. Create 2 Flows:
Main Flow & CXF Client Flow

4. Main Flow Components
• HTTP Listener
– Accepts the request
• Transform Message
– Create request for web service consumer the output is XML
• Flow Reference
– Reference to the Flow of EchoServiceFlow
• Transform Message
– Parse the response of EchoServiceFlow to XML

5. CXF Client Components
• CXF
– proxy-client configuration
• HTTP request
– http request hold the configuration for the target endpoint

6. Request Configuration
We used Transform Message to create a SOAP request, cxf:jax-ws-client
requires jaxb-object as the acceptable request so we added xml-to-jaxb-
object transformer after it.

7. Request Configuration
Code Snippet:
<dw:transform-message doc:name="Transform Message">
<dw:set-payload><![CDATA[%dw 1.0
%output application/xml
%namespace echo http://www.whiteskylabs.com/wsdl/echo/
---
echo#EchoRequest: {
EchoInfo: {
Id: "1345",
Name: "Mario Luigi",
Description: "Mario Bros",
OtherInfo: "Legendary"
}
}
]]></dw:set-payload>
</dw:transform-message>

8. cxf:proxy-client Configuration
CXF proxies support working with the SOAP body or the entire SOAP
envelope. By default only the SOAP body is sent as payload, but the payload
mode can be set via the "payload" attribute to envelope if needed.

9. Cxf:proxy-client Configuration
We put cxf:proxy-client into a new private flow, to wrap it as a SOAP web
service consumer.
code snippet:
<flow name="EchoServiceProxyFlow">
<cxf:proxy-client
doc:name="CXF"
soapVersion="1.2" payload="body" />
<http:request config-ref="HTTP_Request_Configuration"
path="/echo-ws/ws/EchoService" method="POST"
doc:name="HTTP" />
</flow>

10. Response Configuration
The cxf:proxy-client response can be parsed directly with Transform Message.

11. Response Configuration
code snippet:
<dw:transform-message doc:name="Transform Message">
<dw:set-payload><![CDATA[%dw 1.0
%output application/xml
%namespace echo http://www.whiteskylabs.com/wsdl/echo/
---
{
echo#EchoResponse: {
EchoResult: {
EchoInfo: {
Id:
payload.echo#EchoResponse.EchoResult.EchoInfo.Id,
Name:
payload.echo#EchoResponse.EchoResult.EchoInfo.Name,
Description:
payload.echo#EchoResponse.EchoResult.EchoInfo.Description,
OtherInfo:
payload.echo#EchoResponse.EchoResult.EchoInfo.OtherInfo
}
}
}
}]]></dw:set-payload>
</dw:transform-message>

12. Test the application
• Run the application in Anypoint Studio.
• Send request through HTTP using Postman, browser or any client you
prefer.
• We can see in the screenshot below, the response of the soap web service
we consumed using cxf:proxy-client as web service consumer.

13. Summary
This slide describes how to consume web services
using the CXF proxy-client message processor.
While it is recommended to use web service
consumer in consuming SOAP web service there
are several reasons you may want to use proxy-
client, such as:
• You don’t want to use the WSDL
• You want to work with the SOAP envelope
• To take advantage of the CXF web service
standards support to use WS-Security or WS-
Addressing

14. QUESTIONS?
Please leave a comment 