MuleSoft Consuming Soap Web Service - CXF jax-ws-client Module

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

2. Mulesoft CXF Jax-WS Client Module
When using CXF inside of Mule, there are
several different ways to consume web service.
One is the WSDL First CXF JAX-WS Client: It
builds a message processor which can use a JAX-
WS client generated from WSDL.

3. JAX-WS-CLIENT
WSDL / CONTRACT FIRST APPROACH

4. Create Stub Client with CXF: wsdl2java
First we need to setup our maven configuration to create a stub client.
CXF includes the wsdl2java utility that can generate Java stub client code to
call any method on the service, and marshal and un-marshal request
parameters and responses as Java objects for further processing. This
generated stub client is the core of your connector.

5. Create Stub Client with CXF: wsdl2java
The Java source files generated correspond to the service as described by
the contents of the WSDL.

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

7. Main Flow Components
• HTTP Listener
– Accepts the request
• Transform Message
– Create request for web service consumer the output is XML
• XML-to-JAXB-Object
– Transform XML to JAXB-Object to be consumed by the JAX-WS-Client
• Flow Reference
– Reference to the Flow of EchoServiceFlow
• Transform Message
– Parse the response of EchoServiceFlow to XML

8. CXF Client Components
• CXF
– Jax-ws-client configuration
• HTTP request
– http request hold the configuration for the target endpoint

9. 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.

10. Request Configuration
Check in debug mode, the payload is an instance of EchoRequest.

11. 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>
<mulexml:jaxb-xml-to-object-transformer
returnClass="com.whiteskylabs.wsdl.echo.EchoRequest" jaxbContext-
ref="JAXB_Context"
doc:name="XML to JAXB Object" />

12. cxf:jax-ws-client Configuration
Configure the client with the following properties.
• clientClass: The client class generated by CXF, which extends
javax.xml.ws.Service.
• port: The WSDL port to use for communicating with the service
• wsdlLocation: The location of the WSDL for the service. Since we are
using WSDL first client, CXF uses this to configure the client.
• operation: The operation name to invoke on the web service.

13. cxf:jax-ws-client Configuration
We put cxf:jax-ws-client into a new private flow, to wrap it as a SOAP web
service consumer.
code snippet:
<flow name="EchoServiceFlow">
<cxf:jaxws-client operation="echo"
clientClass="com.whiteskylabs.wsdl.echo.EchoService_Service"
port="EchoServicePort"
wsdlLocation="classpath:/EchoService.wsdl" doc:name="CXF"
soapVersion="1.2" />
<http:request config-ref="HTTP_Request_Configuration"
path="/echo-ws/ws/EchoService" method="POST" doc:name="HTTP" />
</flow>

14. Response Configuration
The cxf:jax-ws-client response is also an object, but unlike with request it’s
not in the form of JAXB-Object. We can directly use the Transform Message to
parse it and create an XML response.

15. Response Configuration
Check in debug mode, the payload is an instance of EchoResponse.

16. Response Configuration
code snippet:
<dw:transform-message doc:name="Transform Message">
<dw:set-payload><![CDATA[%dw 1.0
%output application/xml
%namespace echo http://com.whiteskylabs/wsdl/echo/
---
{
echo#EchoResponse: {
echoResult: {
echoInfo: {
id: payload.echoResult.echoInfo.id,
name: payload.echoResult.echoInfo.name,
description:
payload.echoResult.echoInfo.description,
otherInfo: payload.echoResult.echoInfo.otherInfo
}
}
}
}]]></dw:set-payload>
</dw:transform-message>

17. 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 web service consumer.

18. Summary
This slide describes how to consume web
services using the CXF jax-ws-client message
processor using WSDL first approach.
It is still recommended to use the Web Service
Consumer component instead of this whenever
possible.

19. QUESTIONS?
Please leave a comment 