Axis2 Tutorial

This tutorial is intended for Java developers who are looking forward for developing their first SOAP based Axis2 Web Service application. Theoretical knowledge of Web Services (including SOAP & WSDL) and practical knowledge of Eclipse IDE , ANT will be a prerequisite for understanding this tutorial.

Tools required :

Java 7 (JDK & JRE), Eclipse 3.5, Axis2 1.5

I will be using Axis2, which is one of the widely used web service/SOAP engine for deploying the below created sample web service component.  I assume you already have Java & Eclipse installed in your system.

Steps for creating & running your first SOAP based Axis2 Web Service

1. Install Axis2 :

The latest version of Axis2 can be downloaded from here. Its available for  download in two different formats – Standard & WAR distributions. I will be making use of the Standard binary distribution in this example. However, WAR distribution can be used instead, if you want to embed the Axis2 engine in a servlet container like Tomcat.

After downloading Axis2, to complete the installation, ‘AXIS2_HOME‘ environment variable needs to be pointed to the Axis2 home directory(eg., C:/Axis2-1.5).

2. Create a new Java project :

Create a new Java project titled ‘SampleWS’ inside your Eclipse.  Create a new java class called ‘SampleService‘ inside the ‘com.techsagar.ws’ package. Add the below code as part of this class.

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package com.techsagar.ws; public class SampleService {     public String getOSName()        {     return System.getProperty(os.name);        }}

We will be exposing the ‘getOSName()’ method which is returning the name of the operating system, as a web service.

3. Configure the web service methods : 

Create a new ‘services.xml’ file in the project path & add the following contents,

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<serviceGroup> <service name="SampleService"> <Description> Sample Web Service</Description> <messageReceivers> <messageReceiver mep="http://www.w3.org/2004/08/wsdl/in-only" class="org.apache.axis2.rpc.receivers.RPCInOnlyMessageReceiver" /> <messageReceiver mep="http://www.w3.org/2004/08/wsdl/in-out" class="org.apache.axis2.rpc.receivers.RPCMessageReceiver" /> </messageReceivers> <parameter name="ServiceClass" locked="false"> com.techsagar.ws.SampleService </parameter> </service> </serviceGroup>

In the above xml, we are supposed to declare all the methods which we want to expose as web services.

4. Package & deploy the component :

Create a new build.xml in the project path & add the following ant script to package the web service component.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>   <project name="SampleWS" default="all" basedir=".">       <description>         Builds the Sample Web Service component.     </description>       <!-- Reads the system environment variables and stores them in properties prefixed with "env" -->     <property environment="env" />       <!-- Information about the application -->     <property name="app.title" value="Sample Web Service" />       <!-- Common directory locations -->     <property name="DeploymentDir" value="${env.AXIS2_HOME}/repository/services" />     <property name="SampleWSDir" value="../SampleWS" />     <property name="classesSampleWS" value="./classes/SampleWS" />         <target name="clean">         <delete dir="${classesSampleWS}" />     </target>       <target name="compile" depends="clean">           <mkdir dir="${classesSampleWS}" />           <echo message="Compiling Sample Web Service ..." />         <javac destdir="${classesSampleWS}" debug="true" deprecation="false">             <src path="${SampleWSDir}/src" />             <include name="**/*.java" />         </javac>         <echo message="Completed Sample Web Service compiling." />       </target>       <target name="all" depends="compile">           <mkdir dir="${classesSampleWS}/META-INF" />         <copy file="${SampleWSDir}/services.xml" todir="${classesSampleWS}/META-INF" />           <zip destfile="${DeploymentDir}/samplews.aar" filesonly="false" whenempty="skip" basedir="${classesSampleWS}" />           <echo message="Completed packaging sample service" />       </target>   </project>

5. Start the Axis2 Runtime :

Axis2 service can be started by running the ‘axis2server.bat’ present within the ‘%AXIS2_HOME%/bin’ directory.  Thats it, your Axis2 Web Service will be up & running. You can access the Axis2 Web Service end point (WSDL) by pointing your browser to the ‘http://localhost:8080/axis2/services/SampleService?wsdl‘ URL.  The Axis2 Web Service methods can be tested by creating a proxy of the service using a language of your choice.