Easy Proxying of SOAP Web Services
Proxying SOAP Web Services
To proxy a SOAP Web Service with a HTTP endpoint, two types of requests need to be handled:
- Retrieval of the WSDL document, e.g. a
“GET http://www.thomas-bayer.com/axis2/services/BLZService?wsdl“ - The SOAP request, e.g. a
“POST http://www.thomas-bayer.com/axis2/services/BLZService“.
The document returned by the first request, the WSDL document, is a technical description of the web service, its data structures and operations. Amongst other things, it describes the structure of the SOAP requests and their responses. The SOAP requests, the second type of requests, actually contain data, initiate actions and actually perform the tasks of the web service.
Requests of both types are forwarded by the proxy to the backend service, as by any generic HTTP proxy.
Additionally, the WSDL document needs to be slightly modified by the proxy before it is returned to the caller: It contains the SOAP endpoint’s address (“http://www.thomas-bayer.com/axis2/services/BLZService” in the example) and therefore influences the second type of requests. As we want these requests to be sent from the client to the proxy instead of directly to the backend service, we have to change this address to point to the proxy instead of the backend service:
Suppose our SOAP proxy is running on http://soapproxy.mycompany.example/. We then have to change “http://www.thomas-bayer.com/axis2/services/BLZService” to “http://soapproxy.mycompany.example/axis2/services/BLZService“.
A Concrete Example
For example, look at http://www.thomas-bayer.com/axis2/services/BLZService?wsdl. At the very bottom you will the three endpoint addresses for this web service. All of them will have to be changed by the proxy.
Action! – The Proxy Configuration
Doing all this is a piece of cake using Membrane ESB as SOAP proxy:
We download the Membrane ESB distribution (3.5 or later) from the website, and change conf/proxies.xml to
<proxies xmlns="http://membrane-soa.org/schemas/proxies/v1/"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://membrane-soa.org/schemas/proxies/v1/ http://membrane-soa.org/schemas/proxies/v1/proxies.xsd">
<soapProxy port="80" wsdl="http://www.thomas-bayer.com/axis2/services/BLZService?wsdl">
</soapProxy>
</proxies>
The new soapProxy element will handle requests of both types!
We then start Membrane using memrouter.bat.
Done!
Inspecting the result
From the machine itself, where you are running Membrane, you can retrieve the modified WSDL document using this URL: http://localhost/axis2/services/BLZService?wsdl
You will see that “http://www.thomas-bayer.com” was changed to “localhost“. If you use your qualified hostname instead of “localhost“, this will also work.
Of course, you can use any SOAP client, for example soapUI, to access the service via the proxy: Simply specify the WSDL location using the proxy’s address (http://localhost/axis2/services/BLZService?wsdl or use the proxy’s qualified hostname).
The Next Steps
Adding additional features to the proxy is also very simple. We can, for example, change conf/proxies.xml to
<proxies xmlns="http://membrane-soa.org/schemas/proxies/v1/"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://membrane-soa.org/schemas/proxies/v1/ http://membrane-soa.org/schemas/proxies/v1/proxies.xsd">
<soapProxy port="80" wsdl="http://www.thomas-bayer.com/axis2/services/BLZService?wsdl">
<validator />
</soapProxy>
</proxies>
The change will be automatically be picked up by Membrane within a few seconds. With the validator interceptor, Membrane will perform XML Schema validation on both requests and responses, ensuring that all requests and responses adhere to the data structures and rules documented in the WSDL document and the referenced XML Schema documents. This can, for example, help you protect your web service against certain kinds of attacks.
You can find a wide range of features in Membrane’s configuration reference.
For a step-by-step tutorial, follow the SOAP quick start guide.
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