Web Service request using SOAP in a HTTP Post - Start and End numbers

[James Appleby]

I am new to web services, so apologize if any of the terms I use
aren't quite right. I've been looking for information about sending
SOAP requests in a HTTP Post and have run tutorial applications, but
find the format of the request packets on the wire to be strange.

I have run tests using Java EE 5 Update 3 (Sun App Server 9.1) and
also Axis2 on a Tomcat environment, both producing the same results.

This is a request recorded using a wire sniffer against some Axis2
tutorial code:

POST /axis2/services/WeatherService HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8
SOAPAction: "urn:anonOutInOp"
User-Agent: Axis2
Host: machine2:8080
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

d3
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><soapenv:Envelope
xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/
envelope/"><soapenv:Body><getWeather xmlns="http://
service.pojo.sample" /></soapenv:Body></soapenv:Envelope>
0

When the RPC client (written in Java) makes the request, the POST
value is prefixed and suffixed by hexademical values. A little
research has suggested this are relating to how the request will be
chunked for transmission, however I can't find details of what they
are called and how they are calculated.

Can someone please tell me what the proper term for these hexadecimal
values is? Also are they related to the ones that appear in
responses? Any links to recommended articles on the subject would be
appreciated, although once I know the technical name of them,
hopefully I could find these myself.

My objective is to write a testing tool, so I need to know how to
generate these values so that when inputting variable content, I can
set these values appropriately.

All help and advice on this subject will be greatly appreciated.


James Appleby

 

[Donkey Hot]

I am new to web services, so apologize if any of the terms I use
aren't quite right. I've been looking for information about sending
SOAP requests in a HTTP Post and have run tutorial applications, but
find the format of the request packets on the wire to be strange.

I have run tests using Java EE 5 Update 3 (Sun App Server 9.1) and
also Axis2 on a Tomcat environment, both producing the same results.

This is a request recorded using a wire sniffer against some Axis2
tutorial code:

POST /axis2/services/WeatherService HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8
SOAPAction: "urn:anonOutInOp"
User-Agent: Axis2
Host: machine2:8080
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

d3
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><soapenv:Envelope
xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/
envelope/"><soapenv:Body><getWeather xmlns="http://
service.pojo.sample" /></soapenv:Body></soapenv:Envelope>
0

When the RPC client (written in Java) makes the request, the POST
value is prefixed and suffixed by hexademical values. A little
research has suggested this are relating to how the request will be
chunked for transmission, however I can't find details of what they
are called and how they are calculated.

Can someone please tell me what the proper term for these hexadecimal
values is? Also are they related to the ones that appear in
responses? Any links to recommended articles on the subject would be
appreciated, although once I know the technical name of them,
hopefully I could find these myself.

My objective is to write a testing tool, so I need to know how to
generate these values so that when inputting variable content, I can
set these values appropriately.

All help and advice on this subject will be greatly appreciated.


James Appleby

The answer can be found from HTTP protocol RFC's. When the "Transfer-
Encoding" is chunked, there is no legth of tranfer in the HTTP header,
but instead the length of each chunk is in hex right above the data. The
d3 in your example means that the soap message is 211 bytes long.