Testing WSDL documents and Web services using the WSDL Explorer

WSDL documents allow developers to expose their applications as network-accessible services on the Internet. Through UDDI and WSIL, other applications can discover WSDL documents and bind with them to execute transactions or perform other business processes. The Web Services Explorer allows you to explore, import, and test WSDL documents.

Prerequisites: To use the WSDL Explorer:

The WSDL Explorer allows you to explore, and test WSDL documents. For more information on exploring WSDL documents using the WSDL Explorer, refer to Using the WSDL Explorer .

To test a Web service using the WSDL Explorer:

  1. To launch the WSDL Explorer, complete the following steps:

    1. In the Web Services Explorer, switch to the WSDL Explorer by clicking the icon in the upper right-hand corner

      Icon to launch the WSDL Explorer.

  2. Select WSDL Main in the Navigator pane, enter or browse to an existing WSDL URL in the right-hand pane, and click Go. For this example the WSDL being used is a Web Service which returns a temperature for any entered zip code.

    Screen capture of the WSDL Main pane of the Web Services Explorer
    The following nodes will be added to the WSDL tree:

    • The WSDL node:

      WSDL node icon

    • The service node (which represents a service element within the WSDL file):

      Service node icon

    • The binding node:

      Binding node icon

    • The operation node:

      Operation node icon

  3. In the WSDL Binding Details pane, click the operation (in this example the getTemp operation) to display:

    • A drop-down list with the endpoints available for this operation

    • Fields for each of the parameters of this operation (in this example the zipcode parameter) and the type of information the parameter is looking for (in this example zipcode is requesting a string).

      Invoke a WSDL Operation pane of the Web Services Explorer
      The Form view allows you to enter the parameters for the Web service operation call. Parameters names are displayed as links whose action is to display a dialog describing embedded XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) information. More information about XSD can be found here: http://www.eclipse.org/xsd/

      Screen capture of the <a href=XSD Information Dialog" />

  4. Enter your string and click Go. The result is returned in the Status pane.

    Screen capture of an invoked WSDL operation showing the result in the Status pane

  5. If you are using SOAP as your binding method, clicking Source or Form in the upper right-hand corner will toggle the display between the Form view (shown above) and the Source view, which displays the SOAP message in the XML format. You can also enter the same information as in the form, only in XML format (this is suggested for advanced users only). The Explorer does validate the XML if you modify it, but not the parameter values you enter.

    Source view of the Invoke a WSDL Operation pane.

  6. If you are using SOAP as your binding type, you will also have the option of toggling the Status pane between the Source and Form views. The Source view shows the SOAP request and response envelopes, including the parameters you have entered to test the service and the returned value.

    Screen capture of the source view of the <a href=SOAP request and response envelopes" />

 

Related Concepts

Tools for Web services development
Web services development
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)

Related Tasks
Publishing Web services and business entities
Launching the Web Services Explorer
Developing Web services