How to form a cfhttp call to consume a custom webservice API

Question

I've been a cf developer for 11 years, but embarrassed to say that I've done nothing substantial with webservices.

How to I form a cfhttp call to consume the following webservice API provided by the vendor?

Soap 1.2 Request:

POST /Portal/internet.asmx HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.222.240
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: length

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap12:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap12="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
  <soap12:Body>
    <Usage xmlns="http://portal/internet.asmx">
      <SessionID>string</SessionID>
      <CustomerCode>int</CustomerCode>
      <FullUserName>string</FullUserName>
      <StartDate>dateTime</StartDate>
      <EndDate>dateTime</EndDate>
    </Usage>
  </soap12:Body>
</soap12:Envelope>
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: length

Soap 1.2 Response:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap12:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap12="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
  <soap12:Body>
    <UsageResponse xmlns="http://portal/internet.asmx">
      <UsageResult>
        <xsd:schema>schema</xsd:schema>xml</UsageResult>
    </UsageResponse>
  </soap12:Body>
</soap12:Envelope>

I want to do it manually at the moment (I know about cfinvoke and createobject). I came up with the following from a Ben Nadel blog, but I get a "connection failure" error. I guess I just need someone to check for obvious flaws in the code before I look at whether it is genuinely connection/authorisation related.

<cfsavecontent variable="soapBody">
 <cfoutput>
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <soap:Envelope 
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
            xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
            xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
          <soap:Body>
            <Usage xmlns="http://portal/internet.asmx">
              <SessionID>F7B3B3FB-DE35-45CB-A785-8229E91FAEC9</SessionID>
              <CustomerCode>1112221</CustomerCode>
              <FullUserName>MR DAVE GEORGE</FullUserName>
              <StartDate>2010-01-01</StartDate>
              <EndDate>2009-01-01</EndDate>
            </Usage>
          </soap:Body>
        </soap:Envelope>

 </cfoutput>
</cfsavecontent>


<cfhttp
 url="http://portal/internet.asmx"
 method="post"
 result="httpResponse">

 <cfhttpparam
  type="header"
  name="SOAPAction"
  value="http://portal/internet.asmx/Usage"
  />

 <cfhttpparam
  type="header"
  name="accept-encoding"
  value="no-compression"
  />

 <cfhttpparam
  type="xml"
  value="#trim( soapBody )#"
  />

</cfhttp>



 <cfoutput>
 #httpResponse.fileContent# <!--- ouputs "connection failure" --->
    </cfoutput>

Many thanks, Paul

Hi Paul, Just wanted to say: There's nothing to be embarrassed about. I've used CF for 12 years too, lot's I dont know, and lots I'm learning every day. It's one of the things about CFML... you can get so far without having to ask or learn or troubleshoot that it ends up being many years later sometimes! — Jas Panesar
SOAP 1.2 is a mess, especially when CF only supports 1.1 AFAIK — Henry

orangepips orangepips · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-09T03:13:34

Going to take your word and assume cannot do it with CF because as @Henry pointed out it's SOAP 1.2. So looks like this requires using Java directly, specifically Soap with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ). This is in the java package javax.xml.soap, which is not part of a standard Java distribution. Instead it's a separate download from Oracle.

Best end to end tutorial I could find on setting up a connection to an endpoint, building & sending a request, and receiving and parsing a response is from IBM's developerworks site. Be forewarned it's involved and doing so will require installing several jars in the ColdFusion installation's classpath from the aforementioned download.

How to form a cfhttp call to consume a custom webservice API

2 Answers