Future (of!) Technologies

My Review on Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4

2010-03-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

My Explanation on each of these topics will be updated on this article in few days.

Credit Card fields masking in EXSLT (recurssive)

2010-02-26T12:10:00.000-08:00

In my previous article, we saw how we can use eclipse to develop XSLT and EXSLT. In this article let's use EXSLT to do something very useful in financial firms/portal, like masking the sensitive card information like Card Number, CV2 etc which are part of incoming XML (may be a web service request).

To do this using EXSLT, we need to use the EXSLT functions extension, we will write a function by name "maskFields" which in turn uses another function named "mask" to see if the field needs to be masked or directly copied as is. In order to add any new fields/attributes to be masked, all you need to do is to add a new "xsl:when" with appropriate test condition and mask accordingly.

In this example we are masking the following fields/attributes with "X" appropriately:

1) First 12 characters of a Credit Card Number( Account number or PAN number).
2) CV2.
3) Expiry date.

The complete XSLT code below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:func="http://exslt.org/functions" xmlns:my="http://soa2world.blogspot.com"

xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"

exclude-result-prefixes="func my">

<func:function name="my:maskFields">

<xsl:param name="Input" />

<xsl:variable name="result">

<xsl:for-each select="$Input">

<xsl:copy-of select="my:mask(.)" />

</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:variable>

<func:result select="$result" />

</func:function>

<func:function name="my:mask">

<xsl:param name="Input" />

<xsl:variable name="result">

<xsl:for-each select="@*|node()">

<xsl:copy>

<xsl:for-each select="@*">

<xsl:attribute name="{name()}">

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="local-name() = 'PAN'">

<xsl:value-of

select="translate(substring(.,1,12), '0123456789', 'XXXXXXXXXX')" />

<xsl:value-of select="substring(., 13)" />

</xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="local-name() = 'CV2'">

<xsl:value-of select="translate(., '0123456789', 'XXXXXXXXXX')" />

</xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="local-name() = 'Expiry'">

<xsl:value-of select="translate(., '0123456789', 'XXXXXXXXXX')" />

</xsl:when>

<xsl:otherwise>

<xsl:value-of select="." />

</xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:choose>

</xsl:attribute>

</xsl:for-each>

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="local-name() = 'accountNumber'">

<xsl:value-of

select="translate(substring(.,1,12), '0123456789', 'XXXXXXXXXX')" />

<xsl:value-of select="substring(., 13)" />

</xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="local-name() = 'CV2'">

<xsl:value-of select="translate(., '0123456789', 'XXXXXXXXXX')" />

</xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="local-name() = 'expirationDate'">

<xsl:value-of select="translate(., '0123456789', 'XXXXXXXXXX')" />

</xsl:when>

<xsl:otherwise>

<xsl:copy-of select="my:mask(.)" />

</xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:choose>

</xsl:copy>

</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:variable>

<func:result select="$result" />

</func:function>

<xsl:template match="/">

<xsl:variable name="data" select="/"></xsl:variable>

<xsl:copy-of select="my:maskFields($data)" />

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Special thanks to Gertone a fellow Expert, who guided me in deriving this solution.

Sample XML @ http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/3/4/2783086/newTest.xml

String to XML & Apply Xpath

2010-02-19T14:22:00.000-08:00

This seems to be a very common problem, the XML data will be retrieved as a String and then we need to extract a bit of information from the incoming String.

There are possibly many ways to do it, simplest being applying a XPath on the incoming XML String, may be followed by applying REGEX Expression on the incoming String and so on.

In this post we will see how to use XPath Expression on the XML String in Java 5 and above.

Below is the code snippet:

import java.io.StringReader;

import javax.xml.xpath.XPath;

import javax.xml.xpath.XPathConstants;

import javax.xml.xpath.XPathExpressionException;

import javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory;

import org.xml.sax.InputSource;

public class StringXpath {

public static void main(String[] args) throws XPathExpressionException {

String xml = "<VerifyEmailResponse xmlns=\"http://www.strikeiron.com\">"+

"<VerifyEmailResult>"+

"<ServiceStatus>"+

"<StatusNbr>200</StatusNbr>"+

"<StatusDescription>Email Valid</StatusDescription>"+

"</ServiceStatus>" +

"</VerifyEmailResult>"+

"</VerifyEmailResponse>";

XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();

String expression = "//*[local-name()='StatusNbr']/text()";

InputSource inputSource = new InputSource(new StringReader(xml));

System.out.println("Result:"

+ xpath.evaluate(expression, inputSource,XPathConstants.STRING));

}

Output:

Result: 200

This code is pretty straight forward, all we do is create a instance of XPath with appropriate XPath expression and execute it on a InputSource, all we do is populate this InputSource using a String via a StringReader.

Off-note: Damn the blogspot is terrible at eating up the XML tags posted as part of the code replace all your "<" with "& lt;" It will understand you are trying to post a tag.

XSLT and EXSLT in Eclipse

2010-02-16T19:50:00.000-08:00

Xslt and Exslt Eclipse

Mirror files @ http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/3/4/2783086/XSLT.zip

XPath Evaluator - Eclipse

2010-01-31T09:10:00.000-08:00

XPath in Eclipse

Pencil : An Excellent Screen Mock Up Software

2009-08-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

Want to create quick screen mockups of your application or Web Pages for free? Use Mozilla Pencil add-on to do it!

Pencil is a GPL 2 licensed software, personally I feel it really an Excellent tool, it really covers almost all the features required for a Mock up tool like support for displaying Disabled Buttons, Default Buttons , Progress Bars, Window Frames, Iframes bulleting, separators, Tables, Tab Panes and many more.

It has some very interesting features like:

Built-in stencils for diagramming and prototyping
Multi-page document with background page
On-screen text editing with rich-text supports
PNG rasterizing
Undo/redo supports
Installing user-defined stencils
Standard drawing operations: aligning, z-ordering, scaling, rotating...
Adding external objects

It also has Drag drop support, you can drag and drop a Image on to the editor it creates a Bitmap Image with the image.

Currently you can only save the pencil documents for future editing and export them as PNGs. May be in future they can directly support some kind of export as Html/Xhtml etc.

Here is a Quick Mockup I made in 10 minutes :)

Deadly Blow for Flex based presentation SaaS providers

2009-06-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

Three months ago me and my friend Vijay were planning to build a "Flex PPT", which was suppose to be our product that would have allowed users to create professional Flash presentations (similar to PPT) and share them with other users, along with the capability of presenting them offline using Adobe AIR.

We were aware of SlideRocket one of SaaS provider facilitating such features, we were very confident that we could have added more features and other interesting out of box features, but it so happened that I came across Live-Documents from IntraColl co-founded by Sabeer Bhatia (yes the co-founder of Hot Mail!), this was almost exactly the same thing that we had in mind, (but definitely Live-Documents is very professional then what we could have done with just 2 people using some open source frameworks like degrafa, GDS etc ). Hence we decided to drop that plan right then, especially the social integration was the main "out of box" feature we wanted to add to our "Flex PPT", which we thought was missing in SlideRocket.

Any way we were happy to see that at least our idea was worth becoming reality :)

Now let’s talk about the deadly blow from adobe, looks like both Slide Rocket and Live-documents are going to face the wrath of Adobe as it’s coming up with a similar SaaS known as Acrobat.com Presentations, thou it’s still in Adobe labs, I am sure it will be pretty famous soon, this must have surely sent some shock waves to Microsoft as they are going to have a really tough competitors to face.

Actually there is a wonderful comparison page provide by Live-Documents comparing Microsoft PPT , Google Docs and Slide Rocket, and I think it’s time for them to update that list by adding Acrobat.com Presentations.

Personally I am very proud and happy to see some niche and high quality product start-ups popping out in India, and whole heartedly wish any new start-ups “All the very Best”.

Learn Flex in a week! from Adobe

2009-06-22T07:40:00.000-07:00

Adobe has really great business sense, they know how to attract more developers to their community, and I am sure they have done their best, with addition of this new Flex video tutorials, they really have some thing in store for every developer irrespective of an expert or a novice to Flex World.

Link of the official "Flex in a Week" : http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/

They have also provided the complete set of files used in the video tutorials. According to me this is really the first step to learn flex quickly!

My REST White Paper

2009-05-20T08:41:00.000-07:00

REST White Paper

Direct Web Service Client - Using Java

2009-05-19T04:01:00.000-07:00

After giving a new look to my blog, I decided to change my style of blogging too, I am planning to coming with a set of Web Service Client using various Service Engines like Axis, Axis 2, CXF etc. This is going to be a very useful for people who are facing problems in writing direct clients for web services (generally to reduce the memory footprint of the client).

So to start with let's see the default Java Standard Implementation of a Web Service Direct Client

For this purpose let's consider a publicly available web service such as a Stock Quote Service of WebServiceX.net, which also hosts various other utility services.

The WSDL of this Service is available at http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx?wsdl

The actual web service and its other binding details are available at
http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx

Below is the JavaStandardClient.java which invokes the "GetQuote" Operation with "MSFT" as the input parameter.

package com.blogspot.soa2world;

import java.net.URL;

import javax.xml.namespace.QName;

import javax.xml.soap.MessageFactory;

import javax.xml.soap.MimeHeaders;

import javax.xml.soap.Name;

import javax.xml.soap.SOAPBody;

import javax.xml.soap.SOAPBodyElement;

import javax.xml.soap.SOAPConnection;

import javax.xml.soap.SOAPConnectionFactory;

import javax.xml.soap.SOAPElement;

import javax.xml.soap.SOAPEnvelope;

import javax.xml.soap.SOAPHeader;

import javax.xml.soap.SOAPHeaderElement;

import javax.xml.soap.SOAPMessage;

public class JavaStandardClient {

public static void main(String[] args) {

try {

SOAPConnectionFactory soapConnectionFactory = SOAPConnectionFactory

.newInstance();

SOAPConnection connection = soapConnectionFactory

.createConnection();

MessageFactory messageFactory = MessageFactory.newInstance();

//Creating a SOAP message.

SOAPMessage soapMessage = messageFactory.createMessage();

//Getting the SOAP Envelope.

SOAPEnvelope soapEnvelope = soapMessage.getSOAPPart().getEnvelope();

* This is where you can add your custom HTTP headers if required.

* SOAPActions is the most common Header most of the web services

* need.

MimeHeaders mimeHeaders = soapMessage.getMimeHeaders();

mimeHeaders.addHeader("SOAPAction",

"http://www.webserviceX.NET/GetQuote");

* This is where you can add your custom SOAP headers if required.

* Example: WS-Security Username token etc, below shown is a custom

* Authentication header(not required for this service). just added

* for example

SOAPHeader soapHeader = soapMessage.getSOAPHeader();

Name userName = soapEnvelope.createName("username", "",

"http://MyUserCredentials");

SOAPHeaderElement userNameElement = soapHeader

.addHeaderElement(userName);

userNameElement.setValue("SHIVA");

Name password = soapEnvelope.createName("password", "",

"http://MyUserCredentials");

SOAPHeaderElement passwordElement = soapHeader

.addHeaderElement(password);

passwordElement.setValue("OMMMMMMMMMMM");

//Constructing SOAP Body.

SOAPBody soapBody = soapMessage.getSOAPBody();

QName bodyName = new QName("http://www.webserviceX.NET/",

"GetQuote");

SOAPBodyElement bodyElement = soapBody.addBodyElement(bodyName);

QName qn = new QName("http://www.webserviceX.NET/", "symbol");

SOAPElement quotation = bodyElement.addChildElement(qn);

quotation.addTextNode("MSFT");

//Printing the SOAP Request Message.

System.out.println("\n Soap Request:\n");

soapMessage.writeTo(System.out);

System.out.println();

//Setting the end point.

URL endpoint = new URL("http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx");

//Invoking the web service.

SOAPMessage response = connection.call(soapMessage, endpoint);

//Printing the SOAP Response Message.

System.out.println("\n Soap Response:\n");

response.writeTo(System.out);

} catch (Exception ex) {

ex.printStackTrace();

}

After trying out various Options of posting the output of this program, which is a XML I decided to provide the direct links for download of this program and its out put.

JavaStandardClient.java
output.xml

Cloud Computing in Plain English

2009-05-18T16:47:00.001-07:00

Finally some meaningful explanation of Cloud Computing.

My Great Indian Developer Summit Expereience

2009-04-24T17:37:00.000-07:00

Great Indian Developer Summit

Top rated Free / Open Source Flex Stuff

2009-01-30T03:24:00.000-08:00

Here are set of most useful and Excellent Free / Open Source Flex stuff :

1) Animated GIF Loader Flex Component:

Usage : for load animated gif files in to flex applications

Project : http://code.google.com/p/as3gif/

2) Display Self Flex Component:

Usage : Great component for displaying a list of images [must see]

Project : http://www.quietlyscheming.com/blog/components/tutorial-displayshelf-component/

3) Flex Book Component:

Usage : Great component for building photo albums, we can also embed video (to any thing) [must see]

Project : http://www.quietlyscheming.com/blog/components/tutorial-displayshelf-component/

4) Flex Calendar Component:

Usage : Want to build a Gnatt chart, time line based applications, event manager? try this! [must see]

Project : http://code.google.com/p/flexcalendar/

5) Visual Reflection Component:

Usage : For creating attractive reflection effects.

Project : http://blog.benstucki.net/?id=20

6) Flex Unit Testing Framework:

Usage : Flex Unit testing with Record and Play back feature.

Project : http://code.google.com/p/flexmonkey/

7) Flex table Component:

Usage : A Microsoft word table like widget in Flex. [must see]

Project : http://code.google.com/p/flex-table/

8) Flex Lib Project:

Usage : Open Source Flex component repository. [must see]

Project : http://code.google.com/p/flexlib/

9) Flex BirdEye Project:

Usage :Advanced visualization and visual analytics library. It also has interesting sub project.[must see]

Project : http://code.google.com/p/birdeye/

10) Granite Data Services

Usage : Best alternative (Advanced) to Adobe Live Cycle Data Services for J2EE application servers. [must see]

Project : http://www.graniteds.org/

This post will be updated when ever I find any more interesting components and projects.

SOA Interview Questions for Architects

2009-01-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

1) Define SOA?

2) Advantages and disadvantages of adopting SOA in an Organization?

3) Is SOA best suit for every business? (Ex: for a simple system where no services are reusable it’s not a good choice, also real time systems may be tough due to performance reasons.)

4) Are web services must in SOA? Any alternatives?

5) Can set of web services in your project mean you are doing a SOA project? Justify.

6) Need for Registry and repositories in SOA?

7) Need for SOA Governance?

8) Is ESB a must for SOA?

9) Difference b/w ESB and EAI (tough one).

10) Difference b/w ESB and BPEL Engine.

11) Need for Orchestration?

12) Difference b/w BPEL engine and ESB?

13) Importance of Granularity of a Service?

14) What are composite services? How they are different from business processes?

15) What are the important features of an ESB?

16) Difference between BPEL and BPMN?

17) Role of business analyst in SOA projects?

18) Describe your approach for starting an SOA project in an Organization?

19) Possible Security issues in SOA projects? Can achieve an End to End Security?

20) How can we handle Transactions in SOA?

SCDJWS 5 Objectives (Beta exam)

2008-11-18T01:32:00.000-08:00

SCDJWS 5 Objectives

Section 1: XML Web Service Standards

1.1 Given XML documents, schemas, and fragments determine whether their syntax and form are correct (according to W3C schema) and whether they conform to the WS-I Basic Profile 1.1.
1.2 Describe the use of XML schema in Java EE Web services

Section 2: SOAP 1.2 Web Service Standards

2.1 List and describe the encoding types used in a SOAP message.
2.2 Describe the SOAP Processing and Extensibility Model.
2.3 Describe SOAP Message Construct and create a SOAP message that contains an attachment.

Section 3: Describing and Publishing (WSDL and UDDI)

3.1 Explain the use of WSDL in Web services, including a description of WSDL's basic elements, binding mechanisms and the basic WSDL operation types as limited by the WS-I Basic Profile 1.1.
3.2 Describe how WSDL enables one to separate the description of the abstract functionality offered by a service from concrete details of a service description such as “how” and “where” that functionality is offered.
3.3 Describe the Component Model of WSDL including Descriptions, Interfaces, Bindings, Services and Endpoints.
3.4 Describe the basic functions provided by the UDDI Publish and Inquiry APIs to interact with a UDDI business registry.

Section 4: JAX-WS

4.1 Explain JAX-WS technology for building web services and client that communicate using XML
4.2 Given a set of requirements for a Web service, such as transactional needs, and security requirements, design and develop Web service applications that use JAX-WS technology
4.3 Describe the Integrated Stack (I-Stack) which consists of JAX-WS, JAXB, StAX, SAAJ
4.4 Describe and compare JAX-WS development approaches
4.5 Describe the features of JAX-WS including the usage of Java Annotations
4.6 Describe the architecture of JAX_WS including the Tools SPI that define the contract between JAX-WS tools and Java EE.
4.7 Describe creating a Web Service using JAX-WS.
4.8 Describe JAX-WS Client Communications Models
4.9 Given an set of requirements, design and develop a Web service client, such as a Java EE client and a stand-alone client, using JAX-WS.
4.10 Given a set of requirements, create and configure a Web service client that accesses a stateful Web service.

Section 5: REST, JSON, SOAP and XML Processing APIs (JAXP, JAXB and SAAJ)

5.1 Describe the characteristics of REST Web Services.
5.2 Describe the characteristics of JSON Web Services.
5.3 Compare SAOP web services to REST Web Services.
5.4 Compare SAOP web services to JSON Web Services.
5.5 Describe the functions and capabilities of the APIs included within JAXP.
5.6 Describe the functions and capabilities of JAXB, including the JAXB process flow, such as XML-to-Java and Java-to-XML, and the binding and validation mechanisms provided by JAXB.
5.7 Create and use a SOAP message with attachments using the SAAJ APIs.

Section 6: JAXR

6.1 Describe the function of JAXR in Web service architectural model, the two basic levels of business registry functionality supported by JAXR, and the function of the basic JAXR business objects and how they map to the UDDI data structures.
6.2 Create JAXR client to connect to a UDDI business registry, execute queries to locate services that meet specific requirements, and publish or update information about a business service.

Section 7: Java EE Web Services

7.1 Identify the characteristics of and the services and APIs included in the Java EE platform.
7.2 Explain the benefits of using the Java EE platform for creating and deploying Web service applications.
7.3 Describe the functions and capabilities of the JAXP, DOM, SAX, StAX, JAXR, JAXB, JAX-WS and SAAJ in the Java EE platform.
7.4 Describe the role of the WS-I Basic Profile when designing Java EE Web services.

Section 8: Security

8.1 Explain basic security mechanisms including: transport level security, such as basic and mutual authentication and SSL, message level security, XML encryption, XML Digital Signature, and federated identity and trust.
8.2 Identify the purpose and benefits of Web services security oriented initiatives and standards such as Username Token Profile, SAML, XACML, XKMS, WS-Security, and the Liberty Project.
8.3 Given a scenario, implement Java EE based web service web-tier and/or EJB-tier basic security mechanisms, such as mutual authentication, SSL, and access control.
8.4 Describe factors that impact the security requirements of a Web service, such as the relationship between the client and service provider, the type of data being exchanged, the message format, and the transport mechanism.
8.5 Describe WS-Policy that defines a base set of constructs that can be used and extended by other Web specifications to describe a broad range of service requirements and capabilities.

Section 9: Developing Web Services

9.1 Describe the steps required to configure, package, and deploy Java EE Web services and service clients, including a description of the packaging formats, such as .ear, .war, .jar, annotations and deployment descriptor settings.
9.2 Given a set of requirements, develop code to process XML files using the SAX, StAX, DOM, XSLT, and JAXB APIs.
9.3 Given an XML schema for a document style Web service create a WSDL file that describes the service and generate a service implementation.
9.4 Given a set of requirements, create code to create an XML-based, document style, Web service using the JAX-WS APIs.
9.5 Implement a SOAP logging mechanism for testing and debugging a Web service application using Java EE Web Service APIs.
9.6 Given a set of requirements, create code to handle system and service exceptions and faults received by a Web services client.

Section 10: Web Services Interoperability Technologies

10.1 Describe WSIT, the features of each WSIT technology and the standards that WSIT Implements for each technology and how it works.
10.2. Describe how to create a WSIT client from a Web Service Description Language (WSDL) file.
10.3 Describe how to configure web service providers and clients to use message optimization.
10.4 Create a Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) client that accesses a Java web service.
10.5 Describes the best practices for production and consumption of data interoperability between WCF web services and Java web service clients or between Java web services and WCF web service clients.

Section 11: General Design and Architecture

11.1 Describe the characteristics of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and how Web services fit to this model.

11.2 Given a scenario, design a Java EE web service using Web Services Design Patterns (Asynchronous Interaction, JMS Bridge, Web Service Cache, Web Service Broker), and Best Practices.

11.3 Describe how to handle the various types of return values, faults, errors, and exceptions that can occur during a Web service interaction.
11.4 Describe the role that Web services play when integrating data, application functions, or business processes in a Java EE application.

Section 12: Endpoint Design and Architecture

12.1 Given a scenario, design Web Service applications using information models that are either procedure-style or document-style.
12.2 Describe the function of the service interaction and processing layers in a Web service.
12.3 Design a Web service for an asynchronous, document-style process and describe how to refactor a Web Service from a synchronous to an asynchronous model.
12.4 Describe how the characteristics, such as resource utilization, conversational capabilities, and operational modes, of the various types of Web service clients impact the design of a Web service or determine the type of client that might interact with a particular service.

I recently read that SUN certification for web services 5 was released but couldn't d exact Objectives any where, luckily came across a link on Javaranch. I feel they will remain same for actual exam too.

Hopefully this post helps people searching for SCDJWS 5 Objectives.

Finally found a direct link from sun http://www.sun.com/training/certification/beta_scdjws.html

WSO2 Web Service Application Server: A jet boat in Web Services Ocean.

2008-11-13T01:27:00.000-08:00

WSO2 being one of the pioneers in WS-* space. Today lets take a look their Web Services Application Server, which was started by name Tungsten, it has really come a long way and is turning out to be a effective learning tool as well as a Excellent Enterprise product.

The Architectural view shows various modules available as part of WSAS.

As seen it is powered by Axis 2 Web Services engine, along with some impostants specifications like WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Policy, WS-Reliable Messaging.

It also contains a persistence support with Hibernate ORM, XML Schema generation support, WSDL 1.x to WSDL 2.0 converter.

Some of the highlighting features of WSAS :

1) Excellent Web based Management Console.

2) Data services support for RDBMS, MS-Excel(97-2003) and CSV.

3) Excellent Eclipse IDE integration.

4) Being powered by Axis 2, it facilitates development and deployment of Axis 2 Web services from Eclipse.

Step by Step guide @ WSO2 (http://wso2.org/library/2839).

5) Modules available are really impressive, including some very latest specifications like WS-Metadata Exchange.

Server Push (data push) in Flex using Blaze DS and Java.

2008-07-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

Server Push (data push) in Flex using Blaze DS and Java.

Google Chart in Flex

2008-06-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

After reading an article about Google Charts, I just wanted to include these in flex applications, as such flex charts are $ expensive $ (but very impressive), so at least for people who simply want to show the charts as images this article will be useful starting point.

Here is a simple example which demonstrates the use of Google Charts with adobe flex, all we do here is to construct the source of mx:Image of flex dynamically to point the Google chart Api.

You can include any type of Google chart generated by the API buy constructing the source URL dynamically.

Screen Shot:

Download Source or View Online (simple example) .

Feel free share you experiences and comments here.

SOAP Client -> Eclipse Web Service Explorer.

2008-05-21T19:17:00.000-07:00

Part 3: Universal SOAP Client - Eclipse Web Service Explorer!.

I just didn't want to reinvent the wheel; hence I am pointing to the official tutorial which explains how to use Web Service Explorer to invoke web service.

http://help.eclipse.org/help33/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.jst.ws.consumption.ui.doc.user/tasks/ttestwsdl.html

Now in order to invoke you invoke our SOAP interface successfully, make sure that the application is running, and to check it the Web Service has started click the WSDL URL:

http://localhost:8000/employeeManagerService?wsdl

if every thing is perfect then your screen will be as shown below.

Now lets see how to invoke various operations of this web service,

In order to invoke getEmployee operation:

Click on getEmployee in the left hand side navigator window.
Click add on ID actions window.
Set the value to 5.
Click go button.

The response must look like as shown

In order to invoke the delete operation which follow the same above steps by Clicking the deleteEmployee in step 1.

Similarly, in order to invoke the addEmployee operation and updateEmployee operation, you can provide the complete employee details for successfully adding/updating the employee.

The screen shot shows the way to invoke addEmployee operation.

You will see similar screen shot when you select the updateEmployee operation.

You can also see the exact SOAP messages, which are passed between the Client and the Service in the Status window, which has two different view like Source view and Form view, select the Source view to see the exact SOAP messages, by default Form view only show the response got back from the service in a form style.

Thats about the basic functionality of Web Service Explorer, this is one great tool which always helps in Testing as well as developing the Client's simpler, thanks to Eclipse Web Tools Platform.

Even thou there are many other open source clients, I selected Eclipse WTP because of its capabilities and user friendliness, most of the other universal clients are Wizard driven or text based, I personally felt that Eclipse WTP is simpler to use, interactive and efficient. (Note: it uses axis 1.x which is bundled with Eclipse WTP ).

There are other open source tools like SOAP UI, which is a web services testing tool, relatively a little tougher to use, but very efficient for testing SOAP web services, personally I feel its a must have tool for testing the performance of web services.

REST Client -> Poster! (Firefox add-on) .

2008-05-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Part 2: Universal REST Client - Poster!.

Yes it’s really a generic REST Client application which can invoke any type of REST Service.

Poster was something which I got introduced to accidentally, when I was searching for something else, I am really happy that I found it, else making sure my REST service is working or not might have been very complex.

Poster is a Mozilla Firefox add-on which can be found at the following URLs :

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2691

http://code.google.com/p/poster-extension/

Once you install the add-on, you can start the POSTER application either by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + P on the Firefox browser or by clicking the ‘P’ button on the right hand end of the Firefox browser as shown below.

Clicking this button opens up a Pop up window as shown below:

Most of the functionality is self descriptive,

I will explain the fields we are going to use in particular.

URL : REST Service URL.
File : "Data file" like an XML or any Mime that has to be sent to the Service.
Content Type : Mime Type (xml or json etc)
Actions: HTTP Methods to be invoked on the specified URL.
Content to Send: we can type in the content we want to send to the service directly from here, it also facilitates adding headers and parameters.

Now lets see how can we use this tool to invoke the EmployeeMangaer service which we created in the previous article.

In the previous article we have seen that we have mapped various HTTP methods to appropriate method in the service.

HTTP GET -> getEmployee.

HTTP PUT -> updateEmployee.

HTTP POST -> addEmployee.

HTTP DELETE -> deleteEmployee.

In order to get the Employee by specified id, we need to follow these steps:

1) Set the URL to : http://localhost:9000/employeeManagerService/employee/7

2) Click the GET button under Actions.

you will see the following response :

The response clearly states that the getEmployee sent back a content of type "application/xml" and status 200 (ok).

You can also see the XML which was sent back ( Please copy this xml to some file or clip board so that same can be used for update and add just by changing the values. ) , close the response window.

Similarly, now lets see how to add a new Employee.

The steps to be followed for adding a new Employee are:

Set the URL: http://localhost:9000/employeeManagerService/employee
Set Content Type: application/xml
Content to Send: the Employee in XML format i.e use the response we copied previous and change few parameters values, make sure you are not changing any tags.
Click the POST button in the actions.

So the Poster with above settings must look as shown below:

Once you click the POST you will get back a response window showing the new record you added, with a status of 200 (ok) stating that the add was successful.

if the content posted wasn't proper then you will get back a XML Fault in the response this is as shown in the next image.

To do a update employee you need to follow the same above set of steps from step 1) to step 3) and instead of Clicking POST button , Click PUT button in actions, make sure you are trying to update an Employee who is already existing, (same employee Id) . you can try out various options to see how the service behaves under different situations.

Similarly to delete a n Employee you can follow the same steps as that of getting an Employee and instead of clicking GET click DELETE for deleting the employee specified by the id in the URL.

Hope this simple tutorial helps in consuming any REST based service using Poster, I personally felt that its a very very useful tool for consuming REST web services.

Implementation of REST and WS-* (SOAP) Service using CXF

2008-05-19T20:25:00.000-07:00

Part 1: Service Implementation.

Here we are going to develop and expose a simple Employee Manager Service which is a simple CRUD service with following operations

Add Employee.
Get Employee.
Update Employee.
Delete Employee.

We are going to use Apache CXF 2.1 for implementation of these services.

Download the latest (stable) version of Apache CXF.

You can use your favorite Java editor and create a “Java Project” or “Java Application Project” and then create the following classes

------------------- EmployeeManagerService.java -------------

package com.shivaspk.service;

import javax.jws.WebParam;

import javax.jws.WebService;

import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

import com.shivaspk.data.Employee;

@WebService(name = "employeeManagerService")

public interface EmployeeManagerService {

public Employee getEmployee(@WebParam(name="id") String id);

public Response addEmployee(Employee employee);

public Response updateEmployee(Employee employee);

public Response deleteEmployee(@WebParam(name="id") String id);

}

-------------- EmployeeManagerImpl.java ---------------

package com.shivaspk.service.impl;

import java.util.HashMap;

import java.util.Map;

import javax.jws.WebService;

import javax.ws.rs.ConsumeMime;

import javax.ws.rs.DELETE;

import javax.ws.rs.GET;

import javax.ws.rs.POST;

import javax.ws.rs.PUT;

import javax.ws.rs.Path;

import javax.ws.rs.PathParam;

import javax.ws.rs.ProduceMime;

import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

import org.apache.cxf.jaxrs.JAXRSServerFactoryBean;

import org.apache.cxf.jaxws.JaxWsServerFactoryBean;

import com.shivaspk.data.Employee;

import com.shivaspk.service.EmployeeManagerService;

/**

* An Simple example of exposing a single implementation as both

* REST Based and SOAP SOAP based service.

* @author Siva Prasanna Kumar .P

@Path("/employeeManagerService")

@ProduceMime("application/xml")

@WebService(endpointInterface = "com.shivaspk.service.EmployeeManagerService",

serviceName = "defaultEmployeeManagerService",

wsdlLocation = "http://localhost:8000/employeeManagerService?wsdl")

public class EmployeeManagerImpl implements EmployeeManagerService {

/**

* Initial Data map which acts like a Data Source.

private static Map empMap = new HashMap();

/**

* A Simple id counter.

private int i;

* Creating Initial Dummy Data .

{

Employee employee;

for (i = 0; i <10;i++) {

employee = new Employee();

employee.setEmployeeID(i + "");

employee.setEmployeeName("Name " + i);

employee.setPhone("1800000000");

employee.setDepartment("R&D");

empMap.put(employee.getEmployeeID(), employee);

}

/**

* Gets the {@link Employee} identified.

* @return {@link Employee} employee identified by the specified id.

@GET

@Path("/employee/{id}")

public Employee getEmployee(@PathParam("id") String id) {

System.out.println("Invoking getEmployee , Employee id is: " + id);

return empMap.get(id);

}

/**

* Adds a new {@link Employee}.

* @return {@link Response} HTTP Response is returned.

@POST

@Path("/employee")

@ConsumeMime("application/xml")

public Response addEmployee(Employee employee) {

System.out.println("Invoking addEmployee , Employee Name is: "

+ employee.getEmployeeName());

employee.setEmployeeID(++i + "");

empMap.put(employee.getEmployeeID(), employee);

return Response.ok(employee).build();

}

/**

* Updates an Existing {@link Employee}.

* @return {@link Response} HTTP Response is returned.

@PUT

@Path("/employee")

@ConsumeMime("application/xml")

public Response updateEmployee(Employee employee) {

System.out.println("Invoking updateEmployee , Employee id is: "

+ employee.getEmployeeID());

Employee emp = empMap.get(employee.getEmployeeID());

Response response;

if (emp != null) {

empMap.put(employee.getEmployeeID(), employee);

response = Response.ok().build();

} else {

response = Response.notModified().build();

}

return response;

}

/**

* Deletes an Existing {@link Employee}.

* @return {@link Response} HTTP Response is returned.

@DELETE

@Path("/employee/{id}")

public Response deleteEmployee(@PathParam("id") String id) {

System.out.println("Invoking deleteEmployee , Employee id is: " + id);

Employee employee = empMap.get(id);

Response response;

if (employee != null) {

response = Response.ok().build();

empMap.remove(id);

} else {

response = Response.notModified().build();

}

return response;

}

/**

* Instead of using the complicated server setups and Spring

* I felt taking a simple server approach will save a lots of time,

* Hence the main method creates two different simple servers

* on two different ports one for REST service and the other

* for WS-* service.

* @param args

public static void main(String[] args) {

//Service instance

EmployeeManagerService employeeManagerService = new EmployeeManagerImpl();

//SOAP based service Server settings.

JaxWsServerFactoryBean wsServer = new JaxWsServerFactoryBean();

wsServer.setServiceClass(EmployeeManagerService.class);

wsServer.setAddress("http://localhost:8000/employeeManagerService");

wsServer.setServiceBean(employeeManagerService);

wsServer.create();

//REST based service Server Setting.

JAXRSServerFactoryBean restServer = new JAXRSServerFactoryBean();

//this line is a must, check the article for explanation.

restServer.setResourceClasses(Employee.class);

restServer.setServiceBeans(employeeManagerService);

restServer.setAddress("http://localhost:9000/");

restServer.create();

}

-------------------------- Employee.java -----------------------

package com.shivaspk.data;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement(name = "Employee")

public class Employee {

private String employeeID;

private String employeeName;

private String phone;

private String department;

public String getEmployeeID() {

return employeeID;

}

public void setEmployeeID(String employeeID) {

this.employeeID = employeeID;

}

public String getEmployeeName() {

return employeeName;

}

public void setEmployeeName(String employeeName) {

this.employeeName = employeeName;

}

public String getPhone() {

return phone;

}

public void setPhone(String phone) {

this.phone = phone;

}

public String getDepartment() {

return department;

}

public void setDepartment(String department) {

this.department = department;

}

Please make sure that you are having exact same definition of the above classes. Now for compilation of those classes you need to add the CXF jars to the class path, The exact jar required to run this example successfully are :

cxf-2.1.jar
jsr311-api-0.6.jar
wsdl4j-1.6.1.jar
commons-logging-1.1.1.jar
geronimo-ws-metadata_2.0_spec-1.1.2.jar
jaxb-api-2.1.jar
jaxws-api-2.1-1.jar
XmlSchema-1.4.2.jar
jaxb-impl-2.1.6.jar
geronimo-stax-api_1.0_spec-1.0.1.jar
geronimo-annotation_1.0_spec-1.1.1.jar
xml-resolver-1.2.jar
geronimo-activation_1.1_spec-1.0.2.jar
saaj-impl-1.3.jar
saaj-api-1.3.jar
geronimo-servlet_2.5_spec-1.2.jar
jetty-6.1.9.jar
jetty-util-6.1.9.jar
xmlbeans-2.3.0.jar
cxf-manifest.jar

(you can also just add all the jars available in the CXF lib folder to the class path).

Once all the compilation errors are gone, Run or Execute the EmployeeManagerImpl.java.

Once the application is started just to check if the WS-* service has started, click the link below :

http://localhost:8000/employeeManagerService?wsdl

you must see a WSDL (XML) document, this assures you that the WS-* web service is up and running.

To check the REST service you can click this link :

http://localhost:9000/employeeManagerService/employee/7

you must get an XML Response as shown by this link.

Response

Assuming that everything is working perfectly now let’s take a look at the code and see what exactly we are doing.

EmployeeManagerService.java is an Interface which contains the set of method signatures which will be exposed to the external world as a WS-* Service. We are specifying a name by this annotation

@WebService(name = "employeeManagerService")

@WebService also has many other parameters which are extremely useful in defining the behavior of the web service. Take a look at the API doc here.

http://java.sun.com/javaee/5/docs/api/javax/jws/WebService.html

We are specifying the web parameter name using the annotation @WebParam(name="id").

http://java.sun.com/javaee/5/docs/api/javax/jws/WebParam.html

Other than the above two annotations which makes it special it nothing more than a simple Java interface.

Employee.java is a simple Java Bean which is the main data object. Now in order to serialize the object in to various formats like xml, Json the Employee.java must have this JAXB annotation, else you have to provide custom handlers for passing the Objects to and fro from REST Client to Service.

@XmlRootElement(name = "Employee")

http://java.sun.com/javaee/5/docs/api/javax/xml/bind/annotation/XmlRootElement.html

Last and most important Class of all is EmployeeManagerImpl.java which implements the EmployeeManagerService and also starts the simple servers required for starting the services.

Before going any further lets disccuss the following

@Path("/employeeManagerService")this annotation Identifies the URI path that a resource class.

See here for more details : https://jsr311.dev.java.net/nonav/releases/0.6/index.html

@ProduceMime("application/xml") this specifies that the output format you will get is type “application/xml” you can specify many of other Mime types simpler being “application/json”.

@WebService(

endpointInterface = "com.shivaspk.service.EmployeeManagerService",

serviceName = "defaultEmployeeManagerService",

wsdlLocation = "http://localhost:8081/employeeManagerService?wsdl")

this annotation specifies the WSDL location, Service Name and End Point for the WS-* web service.

This is the only annotation required to expose all the methods in the implementation class as web service operations.

The empMap is a HashMap which is populated on start of this class using an initialization block.

@GET

@Path("/employee/{id}")

public Employee getEmployee(@PathParam("id") String id) {

As you can see from the above method declarations, here we are specifying that this method is mapped to HTTP GET request by @GET and available at path specified by @Path and expects a parameter “id” in the URL.

As this is a simple http GET this method can be easily tested by going to this URL from a browser.

http://localhost:9000/employeeManagerService/employee/7

This will return a XML response as shown link :

Response

If you change the

@ProduceMime("application/xml") to @ProduceMime("application/json")

Then you will get

{"Employee":{"department":"R&D","employeeID":7,"employeeName":"Name 7","phone":1800000000}}

Else you may get a save as option if your browser doesn’t understand Json.

Similarly

@DELETE

@Path("/employee/{id}")

public Response deleteEmployee(@PathParam("id") String id) {

deleteEmployee is mapped to the HTTP DELETE and expects a id as the parameter, if also return a Response which is a HTTP response code. These codes are standard HTTP code you will get more information here :

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

if you observe the above method definition you can notice that the @path attributes are same for both get and Delete so now how will you get to know which is being called this is directly defined by the HTTP method invoked in the first case it’s a GET and in later case it’s a DELETE.

Next let’s look at the addEmployee method

@POST

@Path("/employee")

@ConsumeMime("application/xml")

public Response addEmployee(Employee employee) {

addEmployee consumes a “application/xml” this clearly says that it expects a Employee Object in XML format, we can see how to send such an request in the second part of this article. addEmployee is mapped to the HTTP POST method.

Similarly,

@PUT

@Path("/employee")

@ConsumeMime("application/xml")

public Response updateEmployee(Employee employee) {

updateEmployee is mapped to the HTTP PUT method, and this also expects a Employee object as XML .

The only different thing which you may notice in many of these methods is the way the response object is being created,

Example: response = Response.ok().build();

Builds a HTTP 200, and sends as a response.

Finally now as we have defined the operations and there functionality, it’s time to look at the way we expose the services.

Create a service instance

//Service instance

EmployeeManagerService employeeManagerService = new EmployeeManagerImpl();

Now to expose the service as WS-* Service

JaxWsServerFactoryBean wsServer = new JaxWsServerFactoryBean();

wsServer.setServiceClass(EmployeeManagerService.class);

wsServer.setAddress("http://localhost:8000/employeeManagerService");

wsServer.setServiceBean(employeeManagerService);

wsServer.create();

Nothing much to say about it as you can see here

http://cxf.apache.org/javadoc/latest/org/apache/cxf/jaxws/JaxWsServerFactoryBean.html

Now to expose a REST service:

JAXRSServerFactoryBean restServer = new JAXRSServerFactoryBean();

restServer.setResourceClasses(Employee.class);

restServer.setServiceBeans(employeeManagerService);

restServer.setAddress("http://localhost:9000/");

restServer.create();

The setResourceClasses(Employee.class); is very important as this is the one which specifies what resources are exposed by the server, else you will get a Resource not found msg like this ;)

HTTP ERROR: 404

NOT_FOUND

RequestURI=/employeeManagerService/employee/7

The create methods create the server on localhost and the WS-* Service is available on port 8000, REST service is available on 9000.

Creation is Awesome Now how to consume ???

In order to consume these service we need two different tools namely Poster ("Universal REST Client")and Eclipse Web Services Explorer ("Universal SOAP Web Services Client") or SOAP UI ("Web Services Testing Tool").

Consuming these services will be explained in the upcoming articles.