Testing the DVDService
A real nice feature for testing a service is to use the browser. Enter the
name of the service and the name of the method to test, e.g.:
http://localhost:8080/axis/services/DVDService?method=getTitles
If you’re using an XML compliant browser like Internet Explorer then you’ll
see something like this:
(Click on the picture to enlarge it)
Among the SOAP elements you can see that a Vector is returned and it
contains the titles of 3 DVDs, taken from the XML-file specified in the
DVDService code.
Let’s stop for a minute and consider what we’ve got. We’ve written a Java
class called DVDService, which contains no code that relates to web
services. We’ve copied the class file to the Axis directory structure and
deployed it with the adminclient. At this point we’re already able to
make a request that shows the SOAP reply. Let’s try with some other service
methods.
The getDetails method needs an index of the DVD to locate:
I’ve specified i=1 in the URL, but you can type any name you want.
The result from getDetails is actually a DVD bean, so the
structure of the reply is more complex this time. But you can easily find the
bean properties: id, title, length, and actors.
It’s tempting to try to get details with an index that is too high. Let’s try
index=10:
Actually a very kind error message - "Sorry, something seems to have gone
wrong" - don’t you think? The exception that was thrown comes from the
getDetails method in the DVDService class. By the way: this screen
does not contain an XML reply. Use the browsers "View Source" facility to see
that this is plain HTML. The communication between the browser and Axis is not
like a real web service. The browser uses HTTP GET and receives an HTML error
reply. A "normal" web service client will use HTTP POST and will always receive
an XML reply.
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