Swift - creating requests and parsing responses for SOAP Web services

Question

I created 2 helper classes for me. First for general SOAP request:

import Foundation

class ApiManager : NSObject {

    var token: String

    class var sharedInstance: ApiManager {
        struct Static {
            static var instance: ApiManager?
            static var disptachToken: dispatch_once_t = 0
        }

        dispatch_once(&Static.disptachToken) {
            Static.instance = ApiManager()
        }

        return Static.instance!
    }

    override init() {
        token = ""
        super.init()
    }

    func postSOAP(message: String, urlString: String, soapAction: String, completion: (result: NSData) -> Void) {

        var url = NSURL(string: urlString)

        var request = NSMutableURLRequest(URL: url!)

        var msgLength = String(countElements(message))

        request.addValue("text/xml; charset=utf-8", forHTTPHeaderField: "Content-Type")
        request.addValue(msgLength, forHTTPHeaderField: "Content-Length")
        request.addValue(soapAction, forHTTPHeaderField: "SOAPAction")
        if (!token.isEmpty) {
            request.addValue(".CAAUSGEX=" + token, forHTTPHeaderField: "Cookie")
        }
        request.HTTPMethod = "POST"
        request.HTTPBody = message.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding, allowLossyConversion: false) // or false

        let queue:NSOperationQueue = NSOperationQueue()

        NSURLConnection.sendAsynchronousRequest(request, queue: queue, completionHandler:{ (response: NSURLResponse!, data: NSData!, error: NSError!) -> Void in
            completion(result: data)
        })
    }
}

And second for each requests:

class ContentManager : NSObject {

    private let apiManager = ApiManager.sharedInstance

    class var sharedInstance: ContentManager {
        struct Static {
            static var instance: ContentManager?
            static var token: dispatch_once_t = 0
        }

        dispatch_once(&Static.token) {
            Static.instance = ContentManager()
        }

        return Static.instance!
    }

    override init() {
        super.init()
    }

    func login(email: String, password: String, completion: (token: String) -> Void) {
        var soapMessage = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/' xmlns:ns1='http://tempuri.org/'><SOAP-ENV:Body><ns1:LoginMethod><ns1:userName>" + email + "</ns1:userName><ns1:password>" + password + "</ns1:password></ns1:LoginMethod></SOAP-ENV:Body></SOAP-ENV:Envelope>"


        let urlString = "https://someurl.svc/soap"
        let soapAction = "http://someurl/LoginMethod"

        ApiManager.sharedInstance.postSOAP(soapMessage, urlString: urlString, soapAction: soapAction) { (result) -> Void in
            var error: NSError?
            if let xmlDoc = AEXMLDocument(xmlData: result, error: &error) {

                // prints the same XML structure as original
                println(xmlDoc.xmlString)
                let token = xmlDoc.root["s:Body"]["GetResponse"]["LoginTokenResult"].stringValue
                println(token)
                completion(token: token)

            } else {
                println("description: \(error?.localizedDescription)\ninfo: \(error?.userInfo)")
            }
            completion(token: "")
        }
    }

It's working but I would like to create better solution. First improve requests body. Is is to possible to create it somehow from swift class? Let's say I would have class LoginMethod and with properties userName and password and I would call some method and it would return string like this (with values where are variables):

<ns1:LoginMethod><ns1:userName>" + userName + "</ns1:userName><ns1:password>" + password + "</ns1:password></ns1:LoginMethod>

Then I would add begining of xml and end and I would have request.

Second problem is parsing xml. I found AEXML and It works great but again I would like to have something smarter. I would like to give it class and try to fill it with values from xml. My method could be enough for token but what if I have in response array of objects. Or if there are errors or other parameters.

Thanks for help.

Answer 1

If you want a Easy-to-Use Soap parser, you should create soap classe from your WSDL. At this state, there is no tools for swift but you can find tools for objective-c. Before, I used WSDL2Objc to generate objective-c Classes that present a soap service (about 70% of classes are corrects). It can save you many times if you have big SOAP service.

I've just found another tool online (but premium features are not free): http://easywsdl.com/ The author says that it's compatible with Swift but I guest that we have to use Bridging Header. Normally, with Bridging Header, you can import Objective-C classes in your swift project.