The WebServiceTemplate is the core class for client-side Web service access in Spring-WS. It contains methods for sending Source objects, and receiving response messages as either Source or Result. Additionally, it can marshal objects to XML before sending them across a transport, and unmarshal any response XML into an object again.

<beans>

    <bean id="messageFactory" class="org.springframework.ws.soap.saaj.SaajSoapMessageFactory"/>

    <bean id="webServiceTemplate" class="org.springframework.ws.client.core.WebServiceTemplate">
        <constructor-arg ref="messageFactory"/>
        <property name="defaultUri" value="http://example.com/WebService"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

<bean id="webServiceTemplate" class="org.springframework.ws.client.core.WebServiceTemplate">
    <constructor-arg ref="messageFactory"/>
    <property name="messageSender">
        <bean class="org.springframework.ws.transport.http.HttpComponentsMessageSender">
            <property name="credentials">
                <bean class="org.apache.http.auth.UsernamePasswordCredentials">
                    <constructor-arg value="john:secret"/>
                </bean>
            </property>
        </bean>
    </property>
    <property name="defaultUri" value="http://example.com/WebService"/>
</bean>

<beans>

    <bean id="messageFactory" class="org.springframework.ws.soap.saaj.SaajSoapMessageFactory"/>

    <bean id="connectionFactory" class="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnectionFactory">
        <property name="brokerURL" value="vm://localhost?broker.persistent=false"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="webServiceTemplate" class="org.springframework.ws.client.core.WebServiceTemplate">
        <constructor-arg ref="messageFactory"/>
        <property name="messageSender">
            <bean class="org.springframework.ws.transport.jms.JmsMessageSender">
                <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
            </bean>
        </property>
        <property name="defaultUri" value="jms:RequestQueue?deliveryMode=NON_PERSISTENT"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

<beans>

    <bean id="messageFactory" class="org.springframework.ws.soap.saaj.SaajSoapMessageFactory"/>

    <bean id="webServiceTemplate" class="org.springframework.ws.client.core.WebServiceTemplate">
        <constructor-arg ref="messageFactory"/>
        <property name="messageSender">
            <bean class="org.springframework.ws.transport.mail.MailMessageSender">
                <property name="from" value="Spring-WS SOAP Client &lt;[email protected]&gt;"/>
                <property name="transportUri" value="smtp://client:[email protected]"/>
                <property name="storeUri" value="imap://client:[email protected]/INBOX"/>
            </bean>
        </property>
        <property name="defaultUri" value="mailto:[email protected]?subject=SOAP%20Test"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

<beans>

    <bean id="messageFactory" class="org.springframework.ws.soap.saaj.SaajSoapMessageFactory"/>

    <bean id="connection" class="org.springframework.ws.transport.xmpp.support.XmppConnectionFactoryBean">
        <property name="host" value="jabber.org"/>
        <property name="username" value="username"/>
        <property name="password" value="password"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="webServiceTemplate" class="org.springframework.ws.client.core.WebServiceTemplate">
        <constructor-arg ref="messageFactory"/>
        <property name="messageSender">
            <bean class="org.springframework.ws.transport.xmpp.XmppMessageSender">
                <property name="connection" ref="connection"/>
            </bean>
        </property>
        <property name="defaultUri" value="xmpp:[email protected]"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

The WebServiceTemplate contains many convenience methods to send and receive web service messages. There are methods that accept and return a Source and those that return a Result. Additionally, there are methods which marshal and unmarshal objects to XML. Here is an example that sends a simple XML message to a Web service.

import java.io.StringReader;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;

import org.springframework.ws.WebServiceMessageFactory;
import org.springframework.ws.client.core.WebServiceTemplate;
import org.springframework.ws.transport.WebServiceMessageSender;

public class WebServiceClient {

    private static final String MESSAGE =
        "<message xmlns=\"http://tempuri.org\">Hello Web Service World</message>";

    private final WebServiceTemplate webServiceTemplate = new WebServiceTemplate();

    public void setDefaultUri(String defaultUri) {
        webServiceTemplate.setDefaultUri(defaultUri);
    }

    // send to the configured default URI
    public void simpleSendAndReceive() {
        StreamSource source = new StreamSource(new StringReader(MESSAGE));
        StreamResult result = new StreamResult(System.out);
        webServiceTemplate.sendSourceAndReceiveToResult(source, result);
    }

    // send to an explicit URI
    public void customSendAndReceive() {
        StreamSource source = new StreamSource(new StringReader(MESSAGE));
        StreamResult result = new StreamResult(System.out);
        webServiceTemplate.sendSourceAndReceiveToResult("http://localhost:8080/AnotherWebService",
            source, result);
    }

}

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans">

    <bean id="webServiceClient" class="WebServiceClient">
        <property name="defaultUri" value="http://localhost:8080/WebService"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

The above example uses the WebServiceTemplate to send a hello world message to the web service located at http://localhost:8080/WebService (in the case of the simpleSendAndReceive() method), and writes the result to the console. The WebServiceTemplate is injected with the default URI, which is used because no URI was supplied explicitly in the Java code.

Please note that the WebServiceTemplate class is thread-safe once configured (assuming that all of it's dependencies are thread-safe too, which is the case for all of the dependencies that ship with Spring-WS), and so multiple objects can use the same shared WebServiceTemplate instance if so desired. The WebServiceTemplate exposes a zero argument constructor and messageFactory/messageSender bean properties which can be used for constructing the instance (using a Spring container or plain Java code). Alternatively, consider deriving from Spring-WS's WebServiceGatewaySupport convenience base class, which exposes convenient bean properties to enable easy configuration. (You do not have to extend this base class... it is provided as a convenience class only.)

In order to facilitate the sending of plain Java objects, the WebServiceTemplate has a number of send(..) methods that take an Object as an argument for a message's data content. The method marshalSendAndReceive(..) in the WebServiceTemplate class delegates the conversion of the request object to XML to a Marshaller, and the conversion of the response XML to an object to an Unmarshaller. (For more information about marshalling and unmarshaller, refer to the Spring documentation.) By using the marshallers, your application code can focus on the business object that is being sent or received and not be concerned with the details of how it is represented as XML. In order to use the marshalling functionality, you have to set a marshaller and unmarshaller with the marshaller/unmarshaller properties of the WebServiceTemplate class.

To accommodate the setting of SOAP headers and other settings on the message, the WebServiceMessageCallback interface gives you access to the message after it has been created, but before it is sent. The example below demonstrates how to set the SOAP Action header on a message that is created by marshalling an object.

public void marshalWithSoapActionHeader(MyObject o) {

    webServiceTemplate.marshalSendAndReceive(o, new WebServiceMessageCallback() {

        public void doWithMessage(WebServiceMessage message) {
            ((SoapMessage)message).setSoapAction("http://tempuri.org/Action");
        }
    });
}

webServiceTemplate.marshalSendAndReceive(o, new ActionCallback("http://samples/RequestOrder"));

The WebServiceMessageExtractor interface is a low-level callback interface that allows you to have full control over the process to extract an Object from a received WebServiceMessage. The WebServiceTemplate will invoke the extractData(..) method on a supplied WebServiceMessageExtractor while the underlying connection to the serving resource is still open. The following example illustrates the WebServiceMessageExtractor in action:

public void marshalWithSoapActionHeader(final Source s) {
    final Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();
    webServiceTemplate.sendAndReceive(new WebServiceMessageCallback() {
        public void doWithMessage(WebServiceMessage message) {
            transformer.transform(s, message.getPayloadResult());
        },
        new WebServiceMessageExtractor() {
            public Object extractData(WebServiceMessage message) throws IOException
                // do your own transforms with message.getPayloadResult()
                //     or message.getPayloadSource()
            }
        });
}

Spring Web Services 2.0 introduced support for creating Web service client integration tests. In this context, a client is a class that uses the WebServiceTemplate to access a Web service.

The integration test support lives in the org.springframework.ws.test.client package. The core class in that package is the MockWebServiceServer. The underlying idea is that the web service template connects to this mock server, sends it request message, which the mock server then verifies against the registered expectations. If the expectations are met, the mock server then prepares a response message, which is send back to the template.

The typical usage of the MockWebServiceServer is:

Consider, for example, this Web service client class:

import org.springframework.ws.client.core.support.WebServiceGatewaySupport;

public class CustomerClient extends WebServiceGatewaySupport {                           

  public int getCustomerCount() {
    CustomerCountRequest request = new CustomerCountRequest();                           
    request.setCustomerName("John Doe");

    CustomerCountResponse response =
      (CustomerCountResponse) getWebServiceTemplate().marshalSendAndReceive(request);    
      
    return response.getCustomerCount();
  }

}

A typical test for CustomerClient would look like this:

import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner;
import org.springframework.xml.transform.StringSource;

import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;

import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;

import org.springframework.ws.test.client.MockWebServiceServer;                          
import static org.springframework.ws.test.client.RequestMatchers.*;                      
import static org.springframework.ws.test.client.ResponseCreators.*;                     

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)                                                  
@ContextConfiguration("integration-test.xml")                                            
public class CustomerClientIntegrationTest {

  @Autowired
  private CustomerClient client;                                                         

  private MockWebServiceServer mockServer;                                               

  @Before
  public void createServer() throws Exception {
    mockServer = MockWebServiceServer.createServer(client);
  }

  @Test
  public void customerClient() throws Exception {
    Source requestPayload = new StringSource(
      "<customerCountRequest xmlns='http://springframework.org/spring-ws'>" +
        "<customerName>John Doe</customerName>" +
      "</customerCountRequest>");
    Source responsePayload = new StringSource(
      "<customerCountResponse xmlns='http://springframework.org/spring-ws'>" +
        "<customerCount>10</customerCount>" +
      "</customerCountResponse>");

    mockServer.expect(payload(requestPayload)).andRespond(withPayload(responsePayload)); 

    int result = client.getCustomerCount();                                              
    assertEquals(10, result);                                                            

    mockServer.verify();                                                                 
  }

}

To verify whether the request message meets certain expectations, the MockWebServiceServer uses the RequestMatcher strategy interface. The contract defined by this interface is quite simple:

public interface RequestMatcher {

  void match(URI uri,
             WebServiceMessage request)
    throws IOException,
           AssertionError;

}

You can write your own implementations of this interface, throwing AssertionErrors when the message does not meet your expectations, but you certainly do not have to. The RequestMatchers class provides standard RequestMatcher implementations for you to use in your tests. You will typically statically import this class.

The RequestMatchers class provides the following request matchers:

You can set up multiple request expectations by chaining andExpect() calls, like so:

mockServer.expect(connectionTo("http://example.com")).
 andExpect(payload(expectedRequestPayload)).
 andExpect(validPayload(schemaResource)).
 andRespond(...);

For more information on the request matchers provided by RequestMatchers, refer to the class level Javadoc.

When the request message has been verified and meets the defined expectations, the MockWebServiceServer will create a response message for the WebServiceTemplate to consume. The server uses the ResponseCreator strategy interface for this purpose:

public interface ResponseCreator {

  WebServiceMessage createResponse(URI uri,
                                   WebServiceMessage request,
                                   WebServiceMessageFactory messageFactory)
    throws IOException;

}

Once again you can write your own implementations of this interface, creating a response message by using the message factory, but you certainly do not have to, as the ResponseCreators class provides standard ResponseCreator implementations for you to use in your tests. You will typically statically import this class.

The ResponseCreators class provides the following responses:

For more information on the request matchers provided by RequestMatchers, refer to the class level Javadoc.