Tutorial – Beginner Web Services

An introduction to using Axis .

What is Axis?

Axis is essentially a SOAP engine — a framework for constructing SOAP processors such as clients, servers, gateways, etc. The current version of Axis is written in Java. But Axis isn’t just a SOAP engine — it also includes:

  • a simple stand-alone server,
  • a server which plugs into servlet engines such as Tomcat,
  • extensive support for the Web Service Description Language (WSDL),
  • emitter tooling that generates Java classes from WSDL.
  • some sample programs, and
  • a tool for monitoring TCP/IP packets.

Pre-Requisites

Installation

su -
cd /opt
wget http://apache.ausgamers.com/ws/axis/1_4/axis-bin-1_4.tar.gz
tar xvfz axis-bin-1_4.tar.gz
ln -s axis-1_4/ axis
echo "AXIS_HOME=/opt/axis;export AXIS_HOME" > /etc/profile.d/axis.sh
. /etc/profile.d/axis.sh
cp -r $AXIS_HOME/webapps/axis $CATALINA_HOME/webapps
catalina.sh stop
catalina.sh start

At this time, you should be able to confirm this installation was initially successful by going to http://localhost:8080/axis/

Installed Axis Options

The default Axis page, gives you a number of options. To confirm the installation, select the Validate Axis Link http://localhost:8080/axis/happyaxis.jsp . If there is anything missing this page will report it. In my case I was missing XML Security, which is optional.

cd /tmp
wget http://xml.apache.org/security/dist/java-library/xml-security-bin-1_3_0.zip
unzip  xml-security-bin-1_3_0.zip
cp xml-security-1_3_0/libs/xmlsec-1.3.0.jar /opt/tomcat/common/lib
catalina.sh stop
catalina.sh start

One of the links from the default home page are http://localhost:8080/axis/servlet/AxisServlet which Lists services.

First Use

One of the nicest parts of AXIS is its “instant Web service” feature called Java Web Service (JWS) — just take a Java file, rename it, and drop it into TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/axis to make all of the (public) methods in the class callable through Web services.

Quote.java

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class Quote {
  private HashMap quotes = null;
  public Quote() {
    quotes = new HashMap();
    quotes.put("Groucho Marx", "Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana.");
    quotes.put("Mae West", "When women go wrong, men go right after them.");
    quotes.put("Mark Twain", "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.");
    quotes.put("Thomas Edison", "Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.");
  }
  public String quote(String name) {
    String quote;
    if (name == null || name.length() == 0
      || (quote = (String) quotes.get(name)) == null) {
      quote = "No quotes.";
  }
  return (quote);
  }
  public int count() {
    return quotes.size();
  }
}
cp Quote.java /opt/tomcat/webapps/axis/Quote.jws

http://localhost:8080/axis/Quote.jws
http://localhost:8080/axis/Quote.jws?wsdl

More details can be found at Getting Started using Web Services with Tomcat and Axis .

What’s Next

In my next Tutorial, I’ll be moving to the practical use of Web Services using WSDL.

References

Tagged with: General Java Tomcat Web Development

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