How do I add a namespace reference to a SOAP response with Apache Axis2 and WSDL2Java

Question

I'm looking at the SOAP output from a web service I'm developing, and I noticed something curious:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
   <soapenv:Body>
      <ns1:CreateEntityTypesResponse xmlns:ns1="http://somedomain.com/wsinterface">
         <newKeys>
            <value>1234</value>
         </newKeys>
         <newKeys>
            <value>2345</value>
         </newKeys>
         <newKeys>
            <value>3456</value>
         </newKeys>
         <newKeys xsi:nil="1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"/>
         <newKeys xsi:nil="1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"/>
         <errors>Error1</errors>
         <errors>Error2</errors>
      </ns1:CreateEntityTypesResponse>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

I have two newKeys elements that are nil, and both elements insert a namespace reference for xsi. I'd like to include that namespace in the soapenv:Envelope element so that the namespace reference is only sent once.

I am using WSDL2Java to generate the service skeleton, so I don't directly have access to the Axis2 API.

Answer 1

Using WSDL2Java

If you have used the Axis2 WSDL2Java tool you're kind of stuck with what it generates for you. However you can try to change the skeleton in this section:

   // create SOAP envelope with that payload
   org.apache.axiom.soap.SOAPEnvelope env = null;
   env = toEnvelope(
       getFactory(_operationClient.getOptions().getSoapVersionURI()),
       methodName,
       optimizeContent(new javax.xml.namespace.QName
       ("http://tempuri.org/","methodName")));

//adding SOAP soap_headers
_serviceClient.addHeadersToEnvelope(env);

To add the namespace to the envelope add these lines somewhere in there:

OMNamespace xsi = getFactory(_operationClient.getOptions().getSoapVersionURI()).
    createOMNamespace("http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance", "xsi");

env.declareNamespace(xsi);

Hand-coded

If you are "hand-coding" the service you might do something like this:

SOAPFactory fac = OMAbstractFactory.getSOAP11Factory();   
SOAPEnvelope envelope = fac.getDefaultEnvelope();
OMNamespace xsi = fac.createOMNamespace("http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance", "xsi");

envelope.declareNamespace(xsi);
OMNamespace methodNs = fac.createOMNamespace("http://somedomain.com/wsinterface", "ns1");

OMElement method = fac.createOMElement("CreateEntityTypesResponse", methodNs);

//add the newkeys and errors as OMElements here...

Exposing service in aar

If you are creating a service inside an aar you may be able to influence the SOAP message produced by using the target namespace or schema namespace properties (see this article).

Hope that helps.