Java Web Services in a Nutshell

SOAP Header Processing

In Section 6.6, earlier in this chapter, you saw that for both RPC- and document-style operations JAX-RPC method call arguments and return values are placed in the SOAP message body. However, SOAP extensions and higher-level business frameworks based on SOAP messaging, such as WS-Routing and ebXML, typically add elements to the SOAP header as well as or instead of using the message body. The WS-Security extension, for example, provides a framework to include in the SOAP header authentication information, and provides security tokens (such as X.509 certificates) that can be used to verify the identity of the message sender or protect against modification of the message while it is in transit. Applications built using the SAAJ API have direct access to the SOAP header and can therefore add any necessary elements to it before a message is transmitted as well as process header blocks when a message is received. A JAX-RPC application can also access the SOAP header using one (or both) of two techniques that are the subject of this section — mapping header content to method arguments or creating a SOAP message handler.

Mapping Header Content to Method Arguments

Mapping header content to method arguments is a natural and convenient way for a JAX-RPC application to access the header because it is consistent with the JAX-RPC programming model and avoids the need for application code to have any direct dependency on the structure of the underlying messages. You can use ...