Passing an xml document (as a parameter?) to a web service

Question

I am developing a web service in java and Metro that requires a lot of information to be passed. For example, something like xml describing all the attributes of a customer.

I am wondering if there is some standard way in which to pass the data in a document. Currently I have been passing the data as a string parameter named 'customerXML'.

Any suggestions appreciated. FYI I have defined another restful ws using RestEasy which works great using input/output streams, but am looking for a way to leverage soap-based web services to expose similar functionality.

Answer 1

My hypothesis is that there isn't a standard way to pass xml documents to a soap-based web service without coding the entire SOAP message yourself. Hence I do not think there is an easy way to do so and one reason why RESTful web services are gaining acceptance. The best way to do it using SOAP based web services is to pass the document as a string parameter and validate/parse within your server code.

Answer 2

JAX WS is perfect for this requirement, It works on SOAP