Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS), JSR 224, is an important part
of the Java EE 5 and EE 6 platforms. A follow-up to the release of Java API for
XML-based RPC 1.1(JAX-RPC), JAX-WS simplifies the task of
developing web services using Java technology. It addresses some
of the issues in JAX-RPC 1.1 by providing support for multiple
protocols such as SOAP 1.1, SOAP 1.2, XML, and by providing
a facility for supporting additional protocols along with HTTP.
JAX-WS uses JAXB 2.0 for data binding and supports
customizations to control generated service endpoint interfaces.
With its support for annotations, JAX-WS simplifies web service
development and reduces the size of runtime JAR files.
This document demonstrates the basics of using the IDE to develop a JAX-WS web service.
After you create the web service, you write three different web service clients that use the web service over a network, which is called "consuming" a web service. The three clients are a Java class in a Java SE application,
a servlet, and a JSP page
in a web application. A more
advanced tutorial focusing on clients is
Developing JAX-WS Web Service Clients.
The goal of this exercise is to create a project appropriate to the deployment container that you decide to use. Once
you have a project, you will create a web service in it.
Choosing a Container
You can either deploy your web service in a web container or in an EJB container. This depends on your choice of implementation. If you are creating a Java EE 6 application, use a web container in any case, because you can put EJBs directly in a web application.
For example, if you plan to deploy to the Tomcat Web Server, which only has a web container, create a web application,
not an EJB module.
Choose File > New Project (Ctrl-Shift-N). Select Web Application from
the Java Web category or EJB Module from the Java EE category.
You can create a JAX-WS web service in a Maven project. Choose File > New Project (Ctrl-Shift-N) and then Maven Web Application or Maven EJB module from the Maven category. If you haven't used Maven with NetBeans before, see Maven Best Practices.
Name the project CalculatorWSApplication.
Select a location for the project. Click Next.
Select your server and Java EE version and click Finish.
Right-click the CalculatorWSApplication node and
choose New > Web Service.
Name the web service CalculatorWS and type org.me.calculator in
Package. Leave Create Web Service from Scratch selected.
If you are creating a Java EE 6 project, select Implement Web Service as a Stateless Session Bean.
Click Finish.
The Projects window displays the structure of
the new web service and the source code is shown in the editor area.
Adding an Operation to the Web Service
The goal of this exercise is to add to the web service an operation that adds two numbers
received from a client. The NetBeans IDE provides a dialog for adding an operation to a web service. You can open this dialog either in the web service visual designer or in the web service context menu.
Warning: The visual designer is not available in Maven projects.
To add an operation to the web service:
Either:
Change to the Design view in the editor.
Or:
Find the web service's node in the Projects window. Right-click that node. A context menu opens.
Click Add Operation in either the visual designer or the context menu. A dialog box appears where you can define the new operation.
In the upper part of the Add Operation dialog box, type add in Name and type int in
the Return Type drop-down list. In the lower part of the Add Operation dialog box, click Add and create a parameter of type int named i.
Then click Add again and create a parameter of type int called j.
You now see the following:
Click OK at the bottom of the Add Operation dialog box.
The visual designer now displays the following:
Click Source and view the code that you
generated in the previous steps. It differs whether you created the service as an EE6 stateless bean or not. Can you see the difference in the screenshots below?
In the editor, extend the skeleton add operation to the following (changes are in bold):
@WebMethod
public int add(@WebParam(name = "i") int i, @WebParam(name = "j") int j) {
int k = i + j;
return k;
}
As you can see from the preceding code, the web service simply receives
two numbers and then returns their sum. In the next section, you use the IDE
to test the web service.
Deploying and Testing the Web Service
After you deploy a web service to a server, you can use the IDE to open the server's test
client, if the server has a test client. The GlassFish and WebLogic servers provide
test clients. If you are using the Tomcat Web Server, there is no test client, but the IDE
can open a page showing that the web service is deployed. No
facility for testing whether an EJB module is deployed successfully is currently available.
To test successful deployment to a server:
Right-click the project and choose Deploy.
The IDE starts the
application server, builds the application, and deploys the application to
the server. You can follow the progress of these operations in the
CalculatorWSApplication (run-deploy) and the GlassFish server or Tomcat tabs in the
Output view.
In the IDE's Projects tab, expand the Web Services node of the CalculatorWSApplication project.
Right-click the CalculatorWS node, and choose Test Web Service.
The IDE opens the tester page
in your browser, if you
deployed a web application to the GlassFish server.
For the Tomcat Web Server
and deployment of EJB modules, the situation is different:
If you deployed to the GlassFish server, type two numbers
in the tester page, as shown below:
The sum of the two numbers is displayed:
If you deployed to the Tomcat Web Server, you
will see the following instead, which indicates that you have successfully deployed your
web service:
Right-click the project node, choose Properties, and click Run. Depending on the deployment
server that you want to use, do the following:
For the GlassFish server, type /CalculatorWSService?Tester in the Relative URL field.
For the Tomcat Web Server, type /CalculatorWS?Tester in the Relative URL field.
Note: Since the result of a deployed EJB module is not displayed in a browser, you cannot
take the step above if you are working with an EJB module.
You can open a complete EE6 version of the Calculator service by choosing File > New Project (Ctrl-Shift-N) and navigating to Samples > Java Web Services > Calculator (EE6).
A Maven Calculator Service and a Maven Calculator Client are available in Samples > Maven.
Consuming the Web Service
Now that you have deployed the web service,
you need to create a client to make use of the web service's add method. Here,
you create three clients— a Java class in a Java SE application,
a servlet, and a JSP page
in a web application.
In this section, you create a standard Java application. The wizard
that you use to create the application also creates a Java class.
You then use the IDE's tools to create a client and consume the web service that you
created at the start of this tutorial.
If you are using JDK 6 with NetBeans IDE 6.5, you must have JDK 6 Update 7 or later.
Choose File > New Project (Ctrl-Shift-N). Select Java Application from
the Java category. Name the project CalculatorWS_Client_Application. Leave Create Main Class selected and accept all other default settings. Click Finish.
Right-click the CalculatorWS_Client_Application node and
choose New > Web Service Client.
In Project, click Browse. Browse to the web service that you want to consume.
When you have selected the web service, click OK.
Leave the other settings at default and click Finish.
The Projects window displays the new web service client, with a node
for the add method that you created:
Double-click Main.java so that it opens in the
Source Editor. Delete the TODO comment and then drag
the add node above into the empty line.
You now see the following:
public static void main(String[] args) {
try { // Call Web Service Operation
org.me.calculator.CalculatorWSService service = new org.me.calculator.CalculatorWSService();
org.me.calculator.CalculatorWS port = service.getCalculatorWSPort();
// TODO initialize WS operation arguments here
int i = 0;
int j = 0;
// TODO process result here
int result = port.add(i, j);
System.out.println("Result = "+result);
} catch (Exception ex) {
// TODO handle custom exceptions here
}
}
Note: Alternatively, instead of dragging
the add node, you can right-click in the editor
and then choose (in version 6.7 and later) Insert Code > Call Web Service Operation or (in version 6.5.1 and earlier) Web Service Client Resources > Call Web Service Operation.
Initialize the two ints. Just change the
values of the two ints above from 0 to other integers, such as 3 and 4.
In the catch block, replace the commented out TODO with System.out.println("exception" + ex);.
In this section, you create a new web application, after which
you create a servlet. You then use the servlet to consume the
web service that you created at the start of this tutorial.
Important: If you are using JDK 6, you must have JDK 6 Update 7 or later.
Choose File > New Project (Ctrl-Shift-N). Select Web Application from
the Java Web category. Name the project CalculatorWSServletClient.
Click Next and then click Finish.
Right-click the CalculatorWSServletClient node and
choose New > Web Service Client.
The New Web Service Client wizard appears.
In Project, click Browse. Browse to the web service that you want to consume.
When you have selected the web service, click OK.
Leave the other settings at default and click Finish.
The Web Service References node in the Projects window displays
the structure of your newly created client, including
the add operation that you created earlier
in this tutorial:
Right-click the CalculatorWSServletClient project node and choose New > Servlet. Name
the servlet ClientServlet and place it in a package called org.me.calculator.client.
Click Finish.
To make the servlet the entry point to your application,
right-click the CalculatorWSServletClient project node and choose Properties. Open the Run properties and
type /ClientServlet in the Relative URL field. Click OK.
If you are using NetBeans IDE 6.5, you need to disable the Deploy on Save feature. Open the Run properties again and unselect Deploy on Save.
If there
are error icons for ClientServlet.java, right-click the project node and
select Clean and Build.
In the Source Editor, remove the line that comments out the
body of the processRequest method.
This is the line:
/* TODO output your page here
Next, delete the line that ends the section of commented out code:
*/
Add some empty lines after this line:
out.println("<h1>Servlet ClientServlet at " + request.getContextPath () + "</h1>");
Now, drag the node that represents
the add operation into the space that you created.
The processRequest method now looks as
follows (the added code is in bold below):
Note: The added code is for JDK 6. In JDK 5, the service is also instantiated explicitly.
In JDK 6, the service is instantiated by the @WebServiceRef annotation.
protected void processRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException {
response.setContentType("text/html;charset=UTF-8");
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
out.println("<html>");
out.println("<head>");
out.println("<title>Servlet ClientServlet</title>");
out.println("</head>");
out.println("<body>");
out.println("<h1>Servlet ClientServlet at " + request.getContextPath () + "</h1>");
try { // Call Web Service Operation
org.me.calculator.CalculatorWS port = service.getCalculatorWSPort();
// TODO initialize WS operation arguments here
int i = 0;
int j = 0;
// TODO process result here
int result = port.add(i, j);
out.println("Result = "+result);
} catch (Exception ex) {
// TODO handle custom exceptions here
}
out.println("</body>");
out.println("</html>");
out.close();
}
Change the values for i and j to positive integers,
such as 3 and 4, and replace the commented out TODO line in the catch block with out.println("exception" + ex);.
Note: Alternatively, instead of dragging
the add node, you can right-click in the editor
and then choose (in version 6.7 and later) Insert Code > Call Web Service Operation or (in version 6.5.1 and earlier) Web Service Client Resources > Call Web Service Operation.
Right-click the project node and choose Run.
The server starts, if
it wasn't running already; the application is built and deployed, and the browser
opens, displaying the calculation result, as shown below:
Client 3: JSP Page in Web Application
In this section, you create a new web application and
then consume the web service in the default JSP page
that the Web Application wizard creates.
If you are using JDK 6, you must have JDK 6 Update 7 or later.
Choose File > New Project (Ctrl-Shift-N). Select Web Application from
the Java Web category. Name the project CalculatorWSJSPClient. Click Finish.
Right-click the CalculatorWSJSPClient node and
choose New > Web Service Client.
In Project, click Browse. Browse to the web service that you want to consume.
When you have selected the web service, click OK.
Leave the other settings at default
and click Finish.
The Projects window displays the new web service client,
as shown below:
In the Web Service References node, expand
the node that represents the web service. The add operation, which you will
invoke from the client, is now exposed.
Drag the add operation to the client's index.jsp page,
and drop it below the H1 tags. The code for invoking the service's operation
is now generated in the index.jsp page,
as you can see here:
<%
try {
org.me.calculator.CalculatorWSService service =
new org.me.calculator.CalculatorWSService();
org.me.calculator.CalculatorWS port =
service.getCalculatorWSPort();
// TODO initialize WS operation arguments here
int i = 0;
int j = 0;
// TODO process result here
int result = port.add(i, j);
out.println("Result = "+result);
} catch (Exception ex) {
// TODO handle custom exceptions here
}
%>
Change the value for i and j from 0 to other integers, such as 3 and 4. Replace the commented out TODO line in the catch block with out.println("exception" + ex);.
Right-click the project node and choose Run.
The server starts, if
it wasn't running already. The application is built and deployed, and the browser
opens, displaying the calculation result:
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