WSO2 WSF/Spring - Apache Axis2 for spring web services developers

WSO2 WSF/Spring is a project build on top of Apache Axis2 to provide an easy way to way to make Spring beans into Web services. So why WSF/Spring ? Doesn't Axis2 have spring support ? Yes, but WSF/Spring does it 100% Spring way. So no more axis2.xml, services.xml etc and WSF/Spring is allabout Spring beans. So why not give it a try ?

In this post, we will look at a demo web application which is based on WSF/Spring to provide a basic introduction to WSF/Spring. The source of the demo application can be downloaded here. You need either Apache Ant or Apache Maven to build this demo application (Maven is preferred).

Before going in to more details, let's try out the demo application. So if you are using maven all you need to do is to do a maven build on root directory of the downloaded project
using the following command

~../wsfspring$ mvn jetty:run

The other alternative is to build the demo using Apache Ant

~../wsfspring$ ant

and deploy the generated war file [target/wsfspring.war]in a application server such as Apache Tomcat.

Now, if you go to following URL in the browser,

http://localhost:8080/wsfspring/

you will be able to see the home page of the demo application.

















Using the "Services" link, you can see the web services currently deployed in WSF/Spring. Demo application comes with Version service and you will be able to see it if you to if you follow the "Services" link.

"Validate Axis2" link and be used to verify that Axis2 is working correctly. It checks whether libraries required for Axis2 are present and it even send request to the Version service to check whether it is working as shown below.

Now we got the demo application up and running and let's look at the source. First, let's look at the web application description file [wsfpsring/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml]

<web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="2.4"
  xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">

  <listener>
    <listener-class>
      org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
    </listener-class>
  </listener>
    <context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
  </context-param>
   <servlet>
   <servlet-name>axis2</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>
     org.wso2.spring.ws.servlet.SpringAxis2Servlet
   </servlet-class>
   <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
 </servlet>
   <servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>axis2</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>/axis2/*</url-pattern>
 </servlet-mapping> 
   <servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>axis2</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>/services/*</url-pattern>
 </servlet-mapping>
   <welcome-file-list>
   <welcome-file>/axis2-web/index.jsp</welcome-file>
 </welcome-file-list>
</web-app>

SpringAxis2Servlet is defined as servelt in the web.xml and it's the servlet that takes care of all the Axis2 related stuff.

Now let's have look at the spring descriptor file [src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml] which will be the configuration file we will be working with most in WSF/Spring.

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd">

<import resource="axis2Config.xml" />

<bean id="Version" class="org.wso2.spring.ws.Version">
<property name="version" value="Hello, I am WSO2 WSF/Spring version service. My version is SNAPSHOT"/>
</bean>
<bean id="services" class="org.wso2.spring.ws.WebServices">
<property name="services">
   <list>
       <bean id="VersionService" class="org.wso2.spring.ws.SpringWebService">
           <property name="serviceBean" ref="Version"/>
           <property name="serviceName" value="Version"/>
       </bean>
   </list>
</property>
</bean>

</beans>

First we have imported “axis2Config.xml” and all Axis2 related configurations goes in to this file. But for the moment, let's not worry about this.
And then we have the Version bean declared and WebServices bean is used to expose it as a web service.

Next we will look at how to expose a Spring bean as a web service in “Writing your first Spring web service in WSO2 WSF/Spring”;

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