Java™ Web Services Unleashed

The SOAP Encoding

The specification goes on at great length over the encoding. In this chapter, we can point out only the most important rules; turn to the specification itself if you need more details.

Caution

Unlike traditional middleware, SOAP does not explicitly map its encoding to programming languages. In other words, there is no standard SOAP mapping for Java. Therefore, two different implementations of SOAP may produce different encoding for the same objects.

Encoding Fields

The most basic rule is that values are always encoded in elements. For example, a name field is encoded as:

<name>Board room</name>

but not as:

<item name="Board room"/>

SOAP uses attributes exclusively to modify the default processing of an element. For example, ...