Problem with empty elements is SOAP message

[Andrey Karachoun]

Hi all,

I have WSDL file and need to develop a client that sends SOAP request with some required and optional elements. I use WSDL2Java tool from Axis to generate client stubs from WSDL.

In WSDL optional elements are marked by attribute minOccurs in the following way:

<xsd:element name="quantityRequested" type="tns:Individuals" minOccurs="0"/>

In my client I don't fill this optional element with any value. So when client generates SOAP message this empty element is described like this:

...
<quantityRequested xsi:type="xsd:long" xsi:nil="true"/>
...

The server processes request and when parsing this element it throws NumberFormatException because this element is empty. So I make a conclusion that the server does not expect any optional empty elements in messages, instead it prefers the message not to contain such elements at all.

My question is: how should I handle this and what is the best way to make client generate SOAP messages w/out empty optional elements?

Thanks,
Andrey

[Andrey Karachoun]

Hi,

Unfortunately in current Axis release (Axis 1.2 RC2) this problem can
not be resolved in any configuraton way, so I just had to patch two
Axis source files: SerializationContext and RPCParam.

org.apache.axis.encoding.SerializationContext

old way:
134: /**
135: * Send an element with an xsi:nil="true" attribute for null
136: * variables (if Boolean.TRUE), or nothing (if Boolean.FALSE).
137: */
138: private Boolean sendNull = Boolean.TRUE;

new way:
134: /**
135: * Send an element with an xsi:nil="true" attribute for null
136: * variables (if Boolean.TRUE), or nothing (if Boolean.FALSE).
137: */
138: private Boolean sendNull = Boolean.FALSE;

org.apache.axis.message.RPCParam

old way:
177: context.serialize(getQName(), // element qname
178: null, // no extra attrs
179: value, // value
180: xmlType, // java/xml type
181: Boolean.TRUE, wantXSIType);

new way:
177: context.serialize(getQName(), // element qname
178: null, // no extra attrs
179: value, // value
180: xmlType, // java/xml type
181: Boolean.FALSE, wantXSIType);

Regards,
Andrey