How to pass SOAP headers with JAXWSProxyHandler

Question

I'm trying to use Opentext Content Web Services(CWS) from my axis2-based web-service.

This is a piece of code that creates a proxy client to CWS and passes an authentication token in a header.

DocumentManagement_Service docManService = new DocumentManagement_Service();
DocumentManagement docManClient = docManService.getBasicHttpBindingDocumentManagement();

    try
    {
        // The namespace of the OTAuthentication object
        final String ECM_API_NAMESPACE = "urn:api.ecm.opentext.com";

        // Create a SOAP header
        SOAPHeader header = MessageFactory.newInstance().createMessage().getSOAPPart().getEnvelope().getHeader();

        // Add the OTAuthentication SOAP header element
        SOAPHeaderElement otAuthElement = header.addHeaderElement(new QName(ECM_API_NAMESPACE, "OTAuthentication"));

        // Add the AuthenticationToken SOAP element
        SOAPElement authTokenElement = otAuthElement.addChildElement(new QName(ECM_API_NAMESPACE, "AuthenticationToken"));
        authTokenElement.addTextNode(authToken);

        // Set the SOAP header on the docManClient
        String ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY = WSBindingProvider.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY;

        ((WSBindingProvider) docManClient).setOutboundHeaders(Headers.create(otAuthElement));
    }
    catch (SOAPException e)
    {
        System.out.println("Failed to set authentication SOAP header!\n");
        System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        System.out.println(e.getStackTrace());
        return;
    }

This code works fine when executed from simple java application. In that case docManClient is a SEIStub object and setOutboundHeaders method works after casting to WSBindingProvider.

But when this code is executed inside my axis2 webservice, docManClient is JAXWSProxyHandler object and it can not be casted into WSBindingProvider nor execute setOutboundHeaders method.

So my question is - How do I pass my header with AuthElement using JAXWSProxyHandler (do the same as setOutBoundHeaders method do) OR Can I somehow convert JAXWSProxyHandler object to SEIStub object?

Answer 1

The problem occurs because you are using an API that is specific to the JAX-WS implementation in the JRE. However, when running on Axis2, the JAX-WS implementation provided by Axis2 will be used instead. That implementation supports a different set of API extensions.

What this means is that your code is not portable across different JAX-WS implementations. You have two options:

• Make it portable by only using standard APIs. In your case this would require implementing a JAX-WS handler that adds the header. To pass the authToken to the handler, you would cast the client to BindingProvider and add the data to the request context.

• Remove the axis2-jaxws JAR from your Axis2 deployment so that your code will use the JAX-WS implementation from the JRE. Of course this won't work if the service itself is deployed as a JAX-WS service. Unfortunately the code snippet doesn't show whether that's the case or not.