soapAction attribute in WSDL operation is empty

Question

There is a web service with the following WSDL:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?><wsdl:definitions xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" xmlns:sch="http://fer2.klab/notify" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/" xmlns:tns="http://fer2.klab/notify" targetNamespace="http://fer2.klab/notify">
  <wsdl:types>
    <xs:schema xmlns:er="http://fer2.klab/notify" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap12/" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" elementFormDefault="qualified" targetNamespace="http://fer2.klab/notify">
    <xs:element name="ServiceRequest">
        <xs:complexType>
            <xs:sequence>
                <xs:element maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" name="HL7message" type="xs:string"/>
            </xs:sequence>
        </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:element name="ServiceResponse">
        <xs:complexType>
            <xs:sequence>
                <xs:element maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" name="response" type="xs:string"/>
            </xs:sequence>
        </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>
</xs:schema>
  </wsdl:types>
  <wsdl:message name="ServiceResponse">
    <wsdl:part element="tns:ServiceResponse" name="ServiceResponse">
    </wsdl:part>
  </wsdl:message>
  <wsdl:message name="ServiceRequest">
    <wsdl:part element="tns:ServiceRequest" name="ServiceRequest">
    </wsdl:part>
  </wsdl:message>
  <wsdl:portType name="NotifyPort">
    <wsdl:operation name="Service">
      <wsdl:input message="tns:ServiceRequest" name="ServiceRequest">
    </wsdl:input>
      <wsdl:output message="tns:ServiceResponse" name="ServiceResponse">
    </wsdl:output>
    </wsdl:operation>
  </wsdl:portType>
  <wsdl:binding name="NotifyPortSoap11" type="tns:NotifyPort">
    <soap:binding style="document" transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"/>
    <wsdl:operation name="Service">
      <soap:operation soapAction=""/>
      <wsdl:input name="ServiceRequest">
        <soap:body use="literal"/>
      </wsdl:input>
      <wsdl:output name="ServiceResponse">
        <soap:body use="literal"/>
      </wsdl:output>
    </wsdl:operation>
  </wsdl:binding>
  <wsdl:service name="NotifyPortService">
    <wsdl:port binding="tns:NotifyPortSoap11" name="NotifyPortSoap11">
      <soap:address location="http://192.168.1.101:8080/fer2-0.0.1/ws"/>
    </wsdl:port>
  </wsdl:service>
</wsdl:definitions>

There is an endpoint:

@Endpoint
public class NotifyEndPoint {

    private static final String NAMESPACE_URL = "http://fer2.klab/notify";

    @Autowired
    MainController mainController;

    @PayloadRoot(namespace = NAMESPACE_URL, localPart = "ServiceRequest")
    @ResponsePayload
    public ServiceResponse send(@RequestPayload ServiceRequest hlMessage){
        System.out.println("notify method");
        Object resp = mainController.notify(null, "", hlMessage.getHL7Message());
        ServiceResponse sr = new ServiceResponse();
        if (resp != null){
            sr.setResponse(resp.toString());
        }
        else{
            sr.setResponse("null");
        }

        return sr;
    }
}

dispatcher-servlet.xml:

<bean id="notify" name="notify" class="org.springframework.ws.wsdl.wsdl11.DefaultWsdl11Definition">
    <!--<property name="createSoap12Binding" value="true" />-->
    <property name="portTypeName" value="NotifyPort" />
    <property name="locationUri" value="/ws" />
    <property name="schema">
        <bean class="org.springframework.xml.xsd.SimpleXsdSchema">
            <property name="xsd" value="notify.xsd" />
        </bean>
    </property>
    <property name="targetNamespace" value="http://fer2.klab/notify" />
    <!--<property name="soapActions">-->
        <!--<props>-->
            <!--<prop key="ServiceRequest">http://fer2.klab/notify/ServiceRequest"</prop>-->
        <!--</props>-->
    <!--</property>-->
</bean>

application-config.xml:

<bean class="klab.backend.utils.MainConfig" id="mainConfig">
    <property name="systemPropertiesModeName" value="SYSTEM_PROPERTIES_MODE_OVERRIDE"/>
    <property name="locations">
        <list>
            <value>/WEB-INF/main.properties</value>
            <value>/WEB-INF/build.properties</value>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

<mvc:annotation-driven>
    <mvc:message-converters>
        <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.StringHttpMessageConverter">
            <property name="writeAcceptCharset" value="true"/>
        </bean>
        <bean class="klab.backend.utils.json.JacksonView2HttpMessageConverter">

            <property name="objectMapper">
                <bean class="klab.backend.utils.json.KJsonMapper">
                </bean>
            </property>
        </bean>
    </mvc:message-converters>
</mvc:annotation-driven>

<context:component-scan base-package="klab.fer2"/>

<bean id="validator" class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.MethodValidationPostProcessor">
    <property name="validator" ref="validator"/>
</bean>

<bean class="klab.backend.controller.base.DefaultController"/>

<bean name="CorsFilter" class="klab.backend.filter.CorsFilter"/>

Why does Service operation in generated WSDL has empty attribute soapAction?

SOAP-request to URL http://192.168.1.101:8080/fer2-0.0.1/ws with following content:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:not="http://fer2.klab/notify">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <not:ServiceRequest>
         <not:HL7message>hdfghdfghdfgh</not:HL7message>
      </not:ServiceRequest>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

results in the following error logged:

 org.springframework.ws.server.EndpointNotFound- No endpoint mapping found for [SaajSoapMessage {http://fer2.klab/notify}ServiceRequest]

Answer 1

The soapAction attribute of the soap:operation element is the value that will be included in the HTTP request message, as in:

POST /StockQuote HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: nnnn
SOAPAction: "http://electrocommerce.org/abc#MyMessage"

As stated in the specification this value only indicates the intent of which operation will be called and it's not normally used by the web services frameworks when creating the stubs.

A common pattern is to set it to empty string as in <soap:operation soapAction="" which means that the operation that the request is referring to is indicated inside the http request's payload. So your wsdl looks fine in that regard.

In Spring though, you can annotate a method with @SoapAction and that method will be mapped using the soapAction header. But you are using @PayloadRoot on your method, so it will be mapped using the local name 'ServiceRequest', therefore the value of the soapAction will be "" and it will not be used.