August 2003
Intermediate to advanced
304 pages
7h 33m
English
Working with SOAP is quite a bit different from working with XML/HTTP because it involves sending and receiving structured messages. Instead of creating requests yourself as a URL, requests are made via XML messages. Here’s a typical SOAP request to retrieve a book’s details with its ASIN:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" [RETURN] xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"> <SOAP-ENV:Body> <namesp1:AsinSearchRequest xmlns:namesp1="urn:PI/DevCentral/SoapService"> <AsinSearchRequest xsi:type="m:AsinRequest"> <asin>0596004478</asin> <page>1</page> <mode>books</mode> <tag>insert associate tag</tag> <type>lite</type> <dev-tag>insert developer token</dev-tag> <format>xml</format> <version>1.0</version> </AsinSearchRequest> </namesp1:AsinSearchRequest> </SOAP-ENV:Body> </SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
You’ll notice that although SOAP uses the same bits of information you use when requesting data via the URL-based XML/HTTP method, it wraps the request in substantial structure. Generating these XML requests “by hand” each time you need one would be time consuming; instead, there are packages (typically called SOAP toolkits) in every programming language that do the heavy lifting for you. These toolkits provide a simple interface ...