Passing XML as parameter in HTTP service call from external system

[Alexander Niemann]

Hello everyone,

I encountered a problem calling a HTTP service from an external system.
After struggling quite a while I found an easy way to solve it - but that
includes adding functionality to OFBiz's XmlSerializer. After all, I'm not
sure how clever I've been and if there isn't a better way to do it. May be
I'm barking of the wrong tree ... so any suggestions are very welcome!

What I need: The external system wants to send master data to our OFBiz.
This has to be done via HTTP request, the data is wrapped in a XML.

What I think I did right: I wrote a Java service expecting the XML as
parameter. The service uses a custom deserializer to unwrap the data and
process it. This is the service definition:

    <service name="importProduct" engine="java" export="true"
        location="org.ofbiz.dgverlag.product.DgvProductImportServices"
invoke="importProduct">
        <description>Import (i.e. create or update) a product
</description>
                <attribute name="productXML" type="String" mode="IN"
optional="false"/>
    </service>

Everything's working fine so far. Now the service should become callable
by HTTP, so I added another service definition as HTTP wrapper:

    <service name="testHttpImportProduct" engine="http" export="true"
            location="http://localhost:8080/webtools/control/httpService"
invoke="importProduct">
        <description>HTTP service wrapper around blabla</description>
        <attribute name="productXML" type="String" mode="IN" optional=
"false"/>
    </service>

Now I can call the service via HTTP. Reading the code I found out that I
have to add at least 2 parameters to the request, namely "serviceName" and
"serviceContext". "serviceName" contains "testHttpImportProduct" and
"serviceContext" is a XML containing a map of the expected attributes,
i.e. "productXML".

I stumbled building the XML context because one XML must be put into the
other one. I wouldn't expect that to be much of a problem normally, but it
is if you have to use an attribute. The <ofbiz-ser> format contains an
element named <std-String> but that's of no use because the parser wants
to parse the contained string. Normally I would use a CDATA section to
stop the parser from parsing the contained XML but that doesn't work with
attributes. Something like

<map-Key><std-String value="productXML"/></map-Key>
<map-Value><std-String value="<![CDATA[<?xml version="1.0"
...."/><map-Key>

just doesn't work  :-(

So I took org.ofbiz.entity.serialize.XmlSerializer and extended
deserializeCustom() by a new custom element named "cus-string". Within
this new element I can simply use CDATA and suddenly all works well:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ofbiz-ser>
  <map-HashMap>
    <map-Entry>
      <map-Key><std-String value="productXML"/></map-Key>
      <map-Value><cus-string><![CDATA[<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="UTF-8"?> ... quite complex XML goes here ...
]]></cus-string></map-Value>
    </map-Entry>
 </map-HashMap>
</ofbiz-ser>

Does anybody have a better solution? Did I do something wrong? Or do you
think this is a extension to the OFBiz framework someone had to come up
with sooner or later?

Sorry for the lengthy mail and thanks in advance


Alexander Niemann
Consultant AEW
Agrenon GmbH
Johanniskirchplatz 6
D-33615 Bielefeld
Fon: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Mobil: [phone]


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