I am new to Spring web services. I am going to create an xml request, and send it as a SOAP request to a web service and receive the response.I read different documents but still confused as I could not find a working sample yet.
I know that I should use WebServiceTemplate and WebServiceMessageSender, SaajSoapmessageFactory (please let me know if I am wrong) but not sure how to use them.
Do I need WSDL? if yes why?
If you have any sample code please send me to get clear on it.
Thanks
If you want to send SOAP requests, you would like to be a SOAP client. Seems like you want to use spring-ws project. Check out their great documentation on the client side. The same documentation will guide you through the process of creating a server. There are plenty of examples and ready-made configuration snippets waiting for you.
Spring-WS is built on top of XML Schema description of your message, so you will need WSDL to generate e.g. JAXB models of your requests and responses.
AFAIK, for "web services" , the WSDL file is the machine blueprint of the "ports" as they are called However! ports in WSDL "means" java language(or any other programming language used with a routine or sub or procedure or function) method and has a specific naming scheme associate the .wsdl xml file(template of the service). Each WSDL port(language method) has specifications of return value and data specifications for how to feed it arguments and their type values.