Introduction

Welcome to Apache SOAP!

Apache SOAP is an open-source implementation of the SOAP v1.1 and SOAP Messages with Attachments specifications. Apache SOAP is developed by the Apache SOAP community.

Features

• Supports most of the SOAP v1.1 specification.
• Provides server-side infrastructure for deploying, managing and running SOAP enabled services.
• Provides client-side API for invoking SOAP services.
• Release includes full source under the Apache Software License.
• Supports three encoding styles: SOAP v1.1 Encoding, Literal XML and XMI.
• XMI encoding (available when using Java 1.2.2) supports automatic marshalling and unmarshalling of arbitrary objects.
• SOAP encoding: built-in support is provided for encoding/decoding primitive types, Strings, arbitrary JavaBeans (using reflection) and Vectors, Enumerations, or 1-dimensional arrays of these types. For other types user can hand-write encoder/decoder and register with Apache-SOAP runtime.
• Literal XML encoding: allows one to send XML elements (DOM org.w3c.dom.Element objects) as parameters by embedding the literal XML serialization of the DOM tree. No code needs to be written to support this (see the addressbook demo to see a sample use of it).
• Supports messaging and RPC over two transports: HTTP (and HTTPS) and SMTP.
• Supports authoring services in scripting languages.

Dependencies

• Java 1.1 or higher, and a servlet engine supporting version 2.1 or higher of the Java Servlet API is required.
• Apache Xerces-Java 1.1.2 (xerces.jar) is required. It must be in the classpath before any other DOM parser.
• As of version 2.1, JavaMail (mail.jar) and the JavaBeans Activation Framework (activation.jar) are required.
• XMI encoding requires use of Java 1.2.2 and XML4J 2.0.15. Your classpath must have xerces.jar first and then xml4j.jar next in that order.
• Implementing services in scripting languages requires the use of Bean Scripting Framework. When you download BSF, note carefully the versions of the various scripting languages supported! [A new release of BSF is upcoming very shortly.]
• SSL (HTTPS) support requires Java 1.2.1 or later and the Java Secure Socket Extension.
• The SMTP transport requires the SMTP and POP3 Bean Suites.

Implementation Restrictions

The following features of the SOAP v1.1 specification are not currently supported:

• encodingStyle attribute must have only one encoding style given (see section 4.1.1 of the spec)
• mustUnderstand attribute
• root attribute
• actor attribute and SOAP intermediaries
• ID/href links and multi-ref accessors
• all but the following XML Schema simple types: string, boolean, double, float, long, int, short, byte

The following limitations on SOAP Messages with Attachments currently exist:

• The document base URI is not picked up from the multipart's Content-Location header.
• Support for relative URIs in Content-Location headers is limited to concatenating the document base URI to the relative URI.
• The provided SMTP transport does not support multipart messages.
• Server-side RPC methods have no way to locate attachments not referenced from the SOAP part of the request, or add attachments to the response other than via the return object. Messaging methods can do this already.