USER MANUALS

Transforming Incoming/Outgoing Soap/Rest Messages with XSLT Stylesheets

As explained in the section XSLT Transformations, we can define XSLT stylesheets (XSL Transformations) to transform incoming/outgoing SOAP and XML messages. Thus, we avoid any modifications to existing clients.

This section explains a possible way to generate these XSLT stylesheets more easily leveraging on some popular open-source tools.

Before starting, we need to obtain some tools that will help us to define these transformations:

  • SoapUI).

  • Eclipse Web Tools. (http://www.eclipse.org/webtools). Set of Eclipse plugins that includes editors to create and test XSLT transformations. Specifically, we will use the “XML Editor Tools” and the “XSL Developer Tools”.

First, we have to publish a new SOAP Web service from Virtual DataPort (section Publication of Web Services explains how to do it). Make the structure of the new Web service as similar as possible to the existing Web service. By doing this, the XSLT stylesheets will be simpler:

  • The operations of the new Web service should have the same parameters as the existing one.

  • Change the names of operations and parameters so they match with the names of the existing Web service.

  • You can also use FLAT / NEST operations (see section Creating Flatten Views) to adjust the hierarchical structure of the published Web service to the structure of the target Web service.

For each operation, we need:

  • For the “Input XSLT Transformation”:

    • A SOAP request sent by the existing Web service client.

    • A SOAP request expected by the new Web service.

  • For the “Output XSLT Transformation”:

    • A SOAP response expected by the existing Web service client.

    • A SOAP response sent by the new Web service.

To obtain these sample messages, we need the WSDL documents (Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1.) of the existing and the new Web services.

If we have deployed the new Web service in the embedded Web container, we can obtain its WSDL at http://localhost:9090/server/<VDP database name>/<name of service>/services/<name of service>?wsdl

For both WSDL files, we have to obtain a sample SOAP request and a sample SOAP response. We can use SoapUI to do this:

  1. Launch SoapUI.

  2. Create a new project for each WSDL. In the “New Project” dialog, select the options “Create Requests” and “Create MockService”. After creating the project, the left-side panel contains a list of the operations of the Web service.

  3. For each operation, double-click Request to open the template of the request.

  4. For each operation, double-click Response to open the template of the response expected by the client.

  5. Save each template: Right-click on each template’s window and then, on “Save as…”

After this, we should have four SOAP files for each operation:

  1. A request sent by the existing Web service client.

  2. A response sent by the existing Web service.

  3. A request expected by the new Web service

  4. A response sent by the new Web service.

Now, for each operation, we have to generate two XSLT stylesheets:

  1. One XSLT stylesheet to transform the request sent by the existing client into what the new Web service expects.

  2. Another XSLT stylesheet to transform the response sent by the new Web service into what the existing client expects.

There are many XML/XSLT editors to write XSLT transformations but in this appendix, we focus on “XML Editor Tools” and “XSL Developer Tools” from the Eclipse Web Tools. We can load the initial SOAP messages into the editor and create the XSLT stylesheets using some useful features of these editors: syntax highlighting and transformation execution/debugging.

Once the XSLT transformations are finished, we have to execute them and validate their output against the schema defined in the WSDLs.

There are two ways to validate the output of XSLT transformations:

  1. Using Eclipse: extract the schema of the message from the WSDL and paste it in an xsd file. Then, using the XML editor, execute the XSD validation of the transformed XML (just the content inside the <Body> tag)

  2. Using SoapUI: in the appropriate window, replace the old XML with the result of the transformation. Then, open the contextual menu and click Validate.

Important

If the schema of a Web service changes, their XSLT stylesheets have to be modified accordingly. Changes in the schema of a Web service include:

  • Renaming existing operations.

  • Removing operations.

  • Adding / renaming / removing parameters of existing operations.

In addition, if we add an operation to an existing Web service, its XSLT transformation will be empty.

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