Reading XML Files using Java, return in a SOAP request

Question

I'm fairly new to using SOAP and Blueprint (Which is just like Spring). Anyway, I'm just trying to learn the basics atm, doing pretty well so far.

I've run into a small problem when using a Java Class to retrieve a specific node value from an XML file. This works when I run the application as a stand-alone but when I am getting the request using Soap, the value "lastName" returns null.

public static void main(String[] args) throws XPathExpressionException {

    DocumentBuilderFactory builderFactory =
            DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    DocumentBuilder builder = null;
    try {
        builder = builderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
    } catch (ParserConfigurationException p) {
        p.printStackTrace();
    }
    try {
    Document document = builder.parse(new FileInputStream("d:\\input11.xml")); 
    XPath xP = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
    String expression ="/people/person/lastName";
    NodeList nodeList = (NodeList) xP.compile(expression).evaluate(document, XPathConstants.NODESET);
    for (int i = 0; i < nodeList.getLength(); i++) {
        lastName += nodeList.item(i).getFirstChild().getNodeValue() + " ";
    }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (SAXException s) {
        s.printStackTrace();
    }

    System.out.println(lastName);
}

public static String returnLastName(String input){
System.out.println(lastName);

return "LastName: "+lastName +"\n";

} 

}

And here's my blueprint.xml code:

    <bean id="lastNameBean" class="com.*****.camelBlueprintTest.XMLCamel" />
    <route id="lastName">
<from uri="cxf:bean:returnLName" />
<bean ref="lastNameBean" method="returnLastName" />
    <log message="The message contains ${body}" />
    <to uri="mock:result" />
</route>

So it does actually return the last names when I run the Java application, but in the SOAP request I am getting "LastName: null".

Answer 1

AH!! I've found the error. Silly me. So, I was calling the method in my blueprint "returnLastName" and it was returning null, I didn't realize that this method was called ALONE, so moving my code from the main into the method fixed it like a charm haha.

I feel really silly but it's always the little mistakes that get me.