Calling a WSDL from liveCode (standalone) or Classic rev CGI?

Keith Clarke keith.clarke at clarkeandclarke.co.uk
Mon Jun 6 13:38:54 EDT 2011


Hi Malte,
My understanding is that although a WSDL is just a type of text file - as in 'definition.wsdl.xml' - the mechanism needed to retrieve it will be driven by the target web service and the approach the developer has adopted for SOAP and/or REST access. The target web service should have documentation, a WSDL file you can download and study and maybe an API that defines what you can access and how. That will define what how your app or CGI server code needs to behave as its client. 

Some web services will accept a GET call, some require a POST call with method and soap headers that conform to an API standard and some won't allow a scripted download at all, instead requiring a user login (so any scripted client app would have to emulate a user's login and admin 'control-panel' navigation actions).

If you can get away with using a GET or POST mechanism, you can decide on whether to use libraries such as lib_SOAP or, if the web service provider has example text files for the SOAP calls and you can do as I did:
1. Drop example call xml text files into custom properties to act as SOAP call templates
2. Replace 'placeholder' strings in the templates with real, call-specific data strings 
3. Simply POST or GET the edited file to the server's URL

You may have to mess around with SOAP and/or HTTP headers. I find SOAP client very useful to fine-tune example SOAP calls (and test them) before copying them into a custom property template http://ditchnet.org/xmlrpc/  This tool has a nice feature in that if you can download the target WSDL, you can open this in SOAP Client and play around with the various calls defined in the API. Oh, and if there's no WSDL download in the API, you'll soon know!

HTH
Best,
Keith..

On 6 Jun 2011, at 15:21, Malte Brill wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I need to call a WSDL from within liveCode, ideally from a Revolution CGI. Did anyone of you do such a thing already? If so, mind to share a recipe? As far as I know there are soap calls involved. I would not want to switch that to php if that can be avoided.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Malte





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