How to extract SOAP header from a WS response using spring-ws and jaxb

Question

We're using spring-ws 2.2 on our application to consume web services. We've been happily doing this for quite some time and everything is working fine, except that now I need to access the SOAP header in the response and I just can't find a way to do this.

We are using a WebServiceTemplate (from springs-ws) configured with a Jaxb2Marshaller. The jaxb files are generated from the wsdl using xjc. The header element in my responses look something like this:

   <soapenv:Header>
         <v1:ResponseHeader status="OK">
             <v1:description>test</v1:description>
          </v1:ResponseHeader>
   </soapenv:Header>

In my java class, the code that parses the response looks like this (I've stripped some irrelevant code):

public CalculationData getValues(Integer id) throws IntegrationException {
    WebServiceMessageCallback callback = createCallback(soapAction);

    GetValuesRequest request = toGetValues(id);
    GetValuesResponse response = null;
    try {
        response = (GetValuesResponse) webServiceTemplate.marshalSendAndReceive(request,         callback);
    } catch (SOAPFaultException fault) {
        log.error("Soap fault occurred during getValues " + id);
        throw new IntegrationException(fault);
    }

    CalculationData data = fromGetValues(response);

    return data;
}

Please help me find a solution for extracting the information from the SOAP header out of the response. I must be able to parse the status code which is sent as an attribute.

By the way. I also have a ResponseHeader.java jaxb class which has been generated from the schemas.

Update from final changes:

This is how my handleResponse method looks like after inlining a ClientInterceptor implementation:

@Override
public boolean handleResponse(MessageContext messageContext) throws WebServiceClientException {
    SoapMessage message = (SoapMessage) messageContext.getResponse();
    Iterator<SoapHeaderElement> responseHeaderElements =
            message.getSoapHeader().examineAllHeaderElements();
    SoapHeaderElement header = null;
    if (responseHeaderElements.hasNext()) {
        header = responseHeaderElements.next();
    } else {
        log.error("Error! No ResponseHeader found in response.");
        return false;
    }

    String responseCode = header.getAttributeValue(new QName(STATUS_QNAME));
    responseMsg.put(RESPONSE_MSG_KEY, responseCode);
    return true;
}

I tried getting the ResponseHeader element by QName, but that did not seem to work for some reason. However, I only expect to get one element in the soap header anyhow, is this will work fine.

Answer 1

For this use case, the best solution is to use a custom WebServiceMessageExtractor, as described here:

http://veithen.github.io/2015/01/03/spring-ws-extracting-soap-headers-from-responses.html