Soap without web services

[John Davis]

I have a client application which has an XML stream marshalled from the application's java data model. The problem is to send this XML stream to the server via SOAP. The server is not running an application server.
I need to find a tutorial and/or toolset which will facilitate the wrapping of this XML body with a SOAP envelope and sending it to the server via http.
The problem is, I haven't found either tutorial or toolset which addresses SOAP apart from Web Services. W3C hasn't been too helpful.
Anyone have any suggestions?
John Davis

[William Brogden]

If you don't need the full panoply of SOAP, use the much simpler XML-RPC.
The XML RPC web site.
Bill

[Lasse Koskela]

William, I might consider the Enhydra kXML-RPC implementation for my J2ME client (the other option being completely custom XML-over-HTTP protocol). So, a couple of questions about XML-RPC:
1) If I'd choose to use XML-RPC, would I be restricted to use fixed size return values? In other words, if I want to return a complex data type like

<root>
  <info>
    <foo>bar</foo>
  </info>
  <list>
    <item type="A">1</item>
    <item type="B">2</item>
  </list>
</root>

...would I be able to return any number of <item>'s or would I be forced to return, say, 2 <item> elements for one method and 3 elements for another method and so on?
2) You wouldn't happen to know how interoperable the kXML-RPC client is with, e.g. Apache's XML-RPC server implementation, would you?

[John Davis]

William,
XML-RPC would be fine, I was going to use it anyway, but I'm not sure what to use to meet the SOAP content part of it, like the Envelope and Header, and if there is a standard for including the XML I already have as Body.

[William Brogden]

John - I'm not sure I understand the problem, if the server is expecting SOAP and you don't have any control over it, you might as well use one of the SOAP packages. If the server has published a WSDL for the service you should be able to work from that with Sun's XML classes.
The simplest and most universal way to include your XML is as a serialized Element. But it all depends on what the server is expecting.
Lasse - As I recall, XML-RPC can be pretty flexible in terms of transmitting arrays of objects. With respect to interoperability of kXML-RPC and Apache XML-RPC - I have not seen any mention of a problem on the kXML newsletters.
WBB

[John Davis]

William (all around good cowpoke)
I guess both you and I don't understand what the problem is, thats why all this confusion.
Please let me explain in a little more detail.
I have been requested to send XML content to a server site using SOAP. The server site hasn't implemented Web Services and doesn't have any WSDL. I don't know what they've implemented and am currently trying to find out more information about this. (somehow, BizTalk is involved).
Eventually, I hope to obtain URI and Method name to use for my Soap request.
In the meantime, I want to develop as much as I can because of severe time constraints.
As I see it, my problem is that I need to obtain a SOAP Envelope and Header to use in wrapping my XML content (SOAP body?) and I would like to have the method available for doing the actual SOAP call. Naturally, I would like to simply meeting the requirements for serialization and encoding.
Does XML-RPC (as you have suggested) meet these needs?
I am also looking at the Apache SOAP Project as a possible source for meeting these requirements.
The general problem I've been running into when trying to get information, is that most sites assume that I am trying to be a client for Web Services, which is not the case.
I am sorry to bother you with these newbie type questions, but I do appreciate the help.
Sincerely
John Davis