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SOAP services

Introduction​

This document describes how the generic SOAP services are working.

These generic SOAP services should only be used on the API endpoint.

The authentication mechanisms available on this API endpoint are described in this document the credentials that needs to be passed to the calls are noted <credentials>.

Warning: never use the public UI endpoint instead of the API endpoint: the public UI endpoint is a statefull UI endpoint that is only supposed to be used by the non authenticated pages of the generic UI. It does not have the scalability and performance of the API enpoint. In other word using the public UI endpoint for services purposes is an absolute anti-pattern.

The calls examples are given using the curl command line tool (that can easily be transposed to any HTTP client tool or API).

Note: in legacy versions 3.x the -b cookies.txt -c cookies.txt parameters of the curl calls below are required as they allow to re-use the same server session (identified by the JSESSIONID cookie). In versions 4.0+ a technical session is used to avoid taking care of the session cookie.

For an application named myapp, the base URL of the SOAP services is:

http[s]://<host[:<port>]>/myappws/soap

As of version 3.0 MAINTENANCE 20, the API endpoint is also available in the main webapp /myapp (this allows to avoid deploying the webservice gateway webapp /myappws):_

http[s]://<host[:<port>]>/myapp/api/soap

if you are using this API endpoint please refer to this document for details on the authentication mechanisms.

It will be noted <base URL> in the rest of the document.

Note: In production the services endpoint's URL should be restricted only to allowed origins e.g. using URL filtering based on request's origin IP address or similar approaches.

Scalability and performances​

For optimal performances under high concurrent volume it may be useful to enable the API pooling by setting the USE_WEBSERVICES_OBJECTPOOL to yes, especially when using a single user (e.g. calls from a "public" frontend).

This allow calls to the services to be processed by a per-user pool of business objects. The pool size can be adjusted/limied using the WEBSERVICES_OBJECTPOOL_MAXPEROBJECT and WEBSERVICES_OBJECTPOOL_MAXTOTAL system parameters.

Business object services​

The URL of the SOAP services endpoint for the SystemParam business object is:

	<base URL>?object=SystemParam

It will be noted <object endpoint URL> in the rest of this section.

WSDL contract​

The WSDL for the SystemParamobject can be displayed using the wsdlparameter to the object base URL:

	curl -u <login>[:<password>] "<object endpoint URL>&wsdl=true"

Example service call​

For instance to do a simple search on the SystemParam business object, you can call:

	curl -u <login>[:<password>] -X POST -H "Content-Type: text/xml" [-H "SOAPAction: search"] -d @request.xml "<object endpoint URL>"

Note: the SOAPAction header is not mandatory (but this is part of the SOAP protocol, no harm adding it).

Where request.xml has the following content:

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ns1="http://myapp/SystemParam">
	<soap:Body>
		<ns1:search/>
	</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Please check the WSDL for details on all other business object's services.

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