Working with multirefs, Axis, and SOAP::Lite

A posting (which is not archived in the group for some reason) in the SOAP::Lite message board raised yet again the shortcomings of SOAP::Lite and how it parses and interprets WSDL. It also brought to light a horrible SOAP Fault returned by Axis which led the poster and I in a completely mistaken direction when trying to solve the problem...

The original problem reported that the Apache Axis Web service was claiming that it could not find the operation called 'getAirFareQuote.' However, upon inspecting the WSDL, one can see that it is indeed defined.

So I spent the next couple of minutes trying to figure out why it wouldn't recognize the operation, especially when I could call other operations documented in the same WSDL file. Weird.

In the end, it had to do with the way Axis was expecting its input parameters... I was misinterpreting an XML multiref that looked like this:

#  <ns1:getAirFareQuote
#     soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
#     xmlns:ns1="urn:SBGAirFareQuotes.sbg.travel.ws.dsdata.co.uk">
#   <in0 href="#id0"/>
#  </ns1:getAirFareQuote>
#  <multiRef id="id0" soapenc:root="0"
#     soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
#     xsi:type="ns2:AirFareQuoteRequest"
#     xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
#     xmlns:ns2="urn:SBGAirFareQuotes.sbg.travel.ws.dsdata.co.uk">
#   <outwardDate
#     xsi:type="xsd:dateTime">2003-04-28T08:00:00.000Z</outwardDate>
#   <returnDate
#     xsi:type="xsd:dateTime">2003-05-05T08:00:00.000Z</returnDate>
#   <originAirport xsi:type="xsd:string">LAX</originAirport>
#   <destinationAirport xsi:type="xsd:string">JFK</destinationAirport>
#  </multiRef>

Into something that looked like this:

#  <ns1:getAirFareQuote
#     soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
#     xmlns:ns1="urn:SBGAirFareQuotes.sbg.travel.ws.dsdata.co.uk">
#   <outwardDate
#     xsi:type="xsd:dateTime">2003-04-28T08:00:00.000Z</outwardDate>
#   <returnDate
#     xsi:type="xsd:dateTime">2003-05-05T08:00:00.000Z</returnDate>
#   <originAirport xsi:type="xsd:string">LAX</originAirport>
#   <destinationAirport xsi:type="xsd:string">JFK</destinationAirport>
#  </ns1:getAirFareQuote>

When it should have looked like this:

#  <ns1:getAirFareQuote
#     soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
#     xmlns:ns1="urn:SBGAirFareQuotes.sbg.travel.ws.dsdata.co.uk">
#   <in0>
#   <outwardDate
#     xsi:type="xsd:dateTime">2003-04-28T08:00:00.000Z</outwardDate>
#   <returnDate
#     xsi:type="xsd:dateTime">2003-05-05T08:00:00.000Z</returnDate>
#   <originAirport xsi:type="xsd:string">LAX</originAirport>
#   <destinationAirport xsi:type="xsd:string">JFK</destinationAirport>
#   </in0>
#  </ns1:getAirFareQuote>

Ok, ok, ok, that is a lot of XML... in the end, the following client was hacked together for SOAP::Lite to fetch airfares for a given set of times, destinations and origins:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# airfare.pl
# Author: breese at grandcentral.com

# Location of the WSDL file
my $WSDL
="http://wavendon.dsdata.co.uk:8080/axis/services/SBGGetAirFareQuote?wsdl";
my $NS = "urn:SBGAirFareQuotes.sbg.travel.ws.dsdata.co.uk";
my $HOST = "http://wavendon.dsdata.co.uk:8080/axis/services/SBGGetAirFareQuote";

use strict;
use SOAP::Lite +trace => qw (debug);

my $search = SOAP::Lite
->readable(1)
->xmlschema('http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema')
->on_action( sub { return '""';} )
->proxy($HOST)
->uri($NS);

# CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss
my $outwardDate = "2003-04-28T08:00:00.000Z";
my $returnDate = "2003-05-05T08:00:00.000Z";
my $origin = "LAX";
my $destination = "JFK";

my $method = SOAP::Data->name('getAirFareQuote')
->prefix('air')
->uri($NS);

my $params =
SOAP::Data
->type('air:AirFareQuoteRequest')
->name('in0' =>
\SOAP::Data->value(
SOAP::Data->name('outwardDate' => $outwardDate)->type('xsd:dateTime'),
SOAP::Data->name('returnDate' => $returnDate)->type('xsd:dateTime'),
SOAP::Data->name('originAirport' => $origin),
SOAP::Data->name('destinationAirport' => $destination)
));

my $results = $search->call($method => $params);

# Loop through the results
foreach my $result (@{$results->{'result'}}) {
print $result->{airlineName} . ": " . $result->{fare} . "\n";
}

1;

Comments

I don't think this

# Loop through the results
foreach my $result (@{$results->{'result'}}) {
print $result->{airlineName} . ": " . $result->{fare} . "\n";
}

can ever work. $results is a SOAP::SOM object which does not have 'result' key -- the only keys are
'_content' and '_current'

[Gary Grubb]

Would you happen to know how to pass an array, e.g @myArray as an argument in SOAP::Lite. ?

I currently pass stings in the form:

SOAP::Data->name('modelOptions' => $modelOptions)->type(string)

but I would prefer to pass an array instead. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Gary Grubb
gary_grubb@agilent.com