Calling a Webservice from Java using Maven

Introduction

This tip shows how you can create stubs for webservices in Java using Maven.

Background

Typically, when you call a Webservice from Java, you need to create a Stub class and use that stub class to call the Webservice in Java. The Stub class will do the Marshalling of the data and send that data to the server. As best practices:

• The stub class should be generated by a tool
• We need to build a JUnit test to make sure you test the generated stub for its method validity, for example if the method signature is changed
• The Stub class is always generated and is never checked into version control so that your code quality tool will not measure the generated code

Details: Webservices with Maven

In this blog, I will show you how to call a Webservice from Java, by having a JAXWS plugin in Maven and generating the stubs during build time. In this blog, I am calling a standard Currency Conversion Webservice (http://www.webservicex.net/CurrencyConvertor.asmx?WSDL), wherein you pass a source currency and target currency and it will return the exchange rate in real time. The Maven config is as below:

<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>jaxws-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.9</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>wsimport</goal>
</goals>
<phase>generate-sources</phase>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<wsdlUrls>
<wsdlUrl>
http://www.webservicex.net/CurrencyConvertor.asmx?WSDL
</wsdlUrl>
</wsdlUrls>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

When you put the above jaxws plugin and run any Maven command like test, package, it generates the stubs in target/jaxws/wsimport/java folder. The Jaxws plugin is configurable to create stubs in any folder.

If you see the JUnit test, it looks as below:

@Test
public void test() {
CurrencyConvertor currencyConvertor = new CurrencyConvertor();

assertTrue(currencyConvertor.getCurrencyConvertorSoap().conversionRate
			(Currency.INR, Currency.USD) >  0.0D);
} 

If you want to test this in STSIDE, maven import the project and add build path for the source to target/jaxws/wsimport/java. Once you have it, you can Run as -> JUnit test, and the test will be successful.

Here is the location to get the latest code @ github and run "mvn test".

I hope this tip helped you.