Correct approach for configuring a WS wich is client and server at the same time.

[jpsilvagallino]

Hello everybody.
I'm a newbie in both spring and ws, and so far, I like what I see in spring quite a lot.

I've been following the reference documentation, some tutorials, books, etc., and I managed to set up some services, and to make some clients for them.

I am currently in the situation where one ws (lets call it wsA) has to consume another ws (wsB), for which I already have a spring-ws client working . However, I am not able to configure the client inside wsA. The probable cause is that wsA is a rpc-style service that uses CXF.

This is the original wsA app-context:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
	xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee" xmlns:jaxws="http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee-2.5.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd
http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/jaxws.xsd"
	default-dependency-check="none" default-lazy-init="false">

	<!-- Load the needed resources that are present in the cxf* jars -->
	<import resource="classpath:META-INF/cxf/cxf.xml" />
	<import resource="classpath:META-INF/cxf/cxf-extension-soap.xml" />
	<import resource="classpath:META-INF/cxf/cxf-servlet.xml" />

	<!-- Hook up the web service -->
	<jaxws:endpoint id="store"  implementor="store.StoreService" 
		address="/store"/>		 

</beans>

..and web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
	<display-name>Tienda de JP</display-name>
	<context-param>
		<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
		<param-value>classpath:appContext.xml</param-value>
	</context-param>
	<listener>
		<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
	</listener>
	<servlet>
		<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>org.apache.cxf.transport.servlet.CXFServlet</servlet-class>
		<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
	</servlet>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

This is the wsB client app-context:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd">

	<bean id="loggingClient" class="com.mycompany.hr.logging.client.LoggingFacilityServiceImpl">
		<property name="defaultUri" value="http://localhost:8080/logging/services/logging"/>
		<property name="marshaller" ref="marshaller"/>
		<property name="unmarshaller" ref="marshaller"/>
    </bean>

     <bean class="org.springframework.ws.server.endpoint.adapter.GenericMarshallingMethodEndpointAdapter">
         <constructor-arg ref="marshaller" />
     </bean>     

     <bean id="marshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.jaxb.Jaxb2Marshaller">
	<property name="contextPath" value="com.mycompany.hr.types"/>
     </bean>

</beans>

Both services and the client are working independently. However, when trying to insert the client into wsA app-context (as simple as copying the definitions of the loggingClient, GenericMarshallingMethodEndpointAdapter, and marshaller in the app-context, and injecting loggingClient into the store endpoint) I get a:

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'org.apache.cxf.resource.ResourceManager' defined in class path resource [META-INF/cxf/cxf.xml]: Initialization of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.CannotLoadBeanClassException: Cannot find class [org.springframework.ws.server.endpoint.adapter.GenericMarshallingMethodEndpointAdapter] for bean with name 'org.springframework.ws.server.endpoint.adapter.GenericMarshallingMethodEndpointAdapter#0' defined in class path resource [appContext.xml]; nested exception is java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.ws.server.endpoint.adapter.GenericMarshallingMethodEndpointAdapter

I believe is not a dependency issue, as I use maven for both projects and have the same dependencies.
If I remove the GenericMarshallingMethodEndpointAdapter bean, I get an InvocationTargetException (caused by a NullPointerException) at the createMarshaller() method of AbstractJaxbMarshaller class (jaxbContext is null).

I would really appreciate some help with this, as there are no examples or documentation on merging clients within endpoints. I thought on splitting the configuration files, but I don't know how to inject the client bean into the endpoint if they were defined in two different app-contexts.

All help will be very much appreciated!!.

[jpsilvagallino]

I had to figure this out myself.

The correct way to go is to:
A) Configure the jaxws:endpoint's "implementator" property with a reference to the service bean declaration.
B) Inject the client in the bean's declaration, not in the endpoint declaration.

The resulting app-context is:

	<!-- Hook up the web service --> 
	<jaxws:endpoint id="tienda" address="/tienda">
		<jaxws:implementor>
			<ref bean="retailerService"/>
		</jaxws:implementor>
	</jaxws:endpoint>
	
	<bean id="retailerService" class="service.RetailerService">
		<property name="logStub" ref="loggingClient"/>
        </bean>
 
         <bean id="loggingClient" class="logging.LoggingClient">
		<property name="defaultUri" value="http://localhost:8888/logging/services/logging" />
		<property name="marshaller" ref="loggingMarshaller"/>
  		<property name="unmarshaller" ref="loggingMarshaller"/>
	 </bean>

	 <bean id="loggingMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.jaxb.Jaxb2Marshaller">
		<property name="contextPath" value="types.logging"/>				
         </bean>