How can I change what order the xml elements of a SOAP::Lite request are generated with in perl?

Question

I'm trying to make a request to a SOAP::Lite server and the vendor wants me to send a request where MessageSource comes before MessageContent, but when I pass my hash to SOAP::Lite it always makes it the other way around.

I've tried using Tie::IxHash to no avail.

I'm thinking about just hand-writing the XML with SOAP::Data->type('xml' => $xml_content), but it really feels like a workaround that will get really annoying to support.

Answer 1

I have personally found that I prefer to use SOAP::Data::Builder for building the SOAP::Data and then passing it to SOAP::Lite.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use 5.006;
use strict;
use warnings;
use SOAP::Lite +trace => [ 'debug' ];
use SOAP::Data::Builder;

my $req1 = SOAP::Lite->new(
    readable => 1,
    autotype => 0,
    proxy    => 'https://example.com/mysoapuri',
);


my $sb = SOAP::Data::Builder->new;
$sb->autotype(0);


$sb->add_elem(
    name  => 'clientLibrary',
    value => 'foo',
);

$sb->add_elem(
    name  => 'clientLibraryVersion',
    value => 'bar',
);

$sb->add_elem(
    name  => 'clientEnvironment',
    value => 'baz',
);

my $ret = $req1->requestMessage( $sb->to_soap_data );

this generates the following SOAP

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope 
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
    xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" 
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
    soap:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" 
    xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <requestMessage>
      <clientLibrary>foo</clientLibrary>

      <clientLibraryVersion>bar</clientLibraryVersion>

      <clientEnvironment>baz</clientEnvironment>
    </requestMessage>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Note: I realize that adding another dependency may not be in the cards... unfortunately I have never really figured out how else to get my data right.