APIs, SDKs, and Services

9.2.4.6
- 9.2.6

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Invoking a Process

To invoke a process using a XML binding endpoint, you need to:

Set the POST header content-type header to text/xml

Set the POST payload (body content) to be the request xml element

Include authorization headers if needed

Send an HTTP POST message to the service XML endpoint

The response from the POST will be an HTTP 200/OK response with a content-type of

text/xml.

The response body will contain the service's response XML. The following snippet shows the HTTP request used to invoke the Loan Approval process using the humantaskProcessDemoService service.


POST /active-bpel/services/XML/humantaskProcessDemoService HTTP/1.1
Content-Length: 710
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8
Authorization: Basic YWVhZG1pbjphZWFkbWlu
Host: localhost:8080
<loan:loanProcessRequest xmlns:loan=
    "http://schemas.active-endpoints.com/sample/LoanRequest/2008/02/loanRequest.xsd">
 <loan:loanType>Automobile</loan:loanType>
 <loan:firstName>John</loan:firstNam>
 <loan:lastName>Smith</loan:lastName>
 <loan:dayPhone>2039299400</loan:dayPhone>
 <loan:nightPhone>2035551212</loan:nightPhone>
 <loan:socialSecurityNumber>123-45-6789</loan:socialSecurityNumber>
 <loan:amountRequested>15000</loan:amountRequested>
 <loan:loanDescription>Application to finance the purchase of a Toyota Prius</loan:loanDescription>
 <loan:otherInfo>Down payment is US$7500</loan:otherInfo>
 <loan:responseEmail>john.smith@example.com</loan:responseEmail>
</loan:loanProcessRequest>

The response looks like:


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Content-Type: text/xml;charset=utf-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:53:40 GMT
<loan:status xmlns:loan="http://www.active-endpoints.com/wsdl/humantaskdemo">
  Thank you for applying for the Automobile loan for the amount of US$15000. 
  Your loan is currently pending approval. You will receive an email once a decision has 
  been made.
</loan:status>

Fault Response

A fault is indicated with an HTTP response code of 500 and whose content-type is

text/xml

(instead of

text/html

text/plain

indicating a generic "internal server error"). An example of a fault response is shown here:


HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Content-Type: text/xml;charset=utf-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:09:51 GMT
Connection: close
<aex:Fault xmlns:aex="http://www.active-endpoints.com/2004/06/bpel/extensions/">
   <faultcode name="systemError" 
          namespace="http://www.active-endpoints.com/2004/06/bpel/extensions/"/>
   <faultstring>Could not find match for Operation from given parameters</faultstring>
</aex:Fault>

Attachments

When sending attachments the payload of the HTTP body must be

multipart/related

content, with the first part being the message XML payload (

text/xml

), followed by additional parts representing the attachments. Attachments sent with the payload are bound to the process variable associated with the message

Receive

activity.


POST /active-bpel/services/XML/humantaskProcessDemoService HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: multipart/related; type="text/xml"; start="<part1_id>"; boundary="the_boundry"
Content-Length: 1410
MIME-Version: 1.0
Host: localhost:8080
--the_boundry
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-ID: <part1_id>
<loan:loanProcessRequest xmlns:loan=
    "http://schemas.active-endpoints.com/sample/LoanRequest/2008/02/loanRequest.xsd">
 <loan:loanType>Automobile</loan:loanType>
 <loan:firstName>John</loan:firstName>
 <loan:lastName>Smith</loan:lastName>
 <loan:dayPhone>2039299400</loan:dayPhone>
 <loan:nightPhone>2035551212</loan:nightPhone>
 <loan:socialSecurityNumber>123-45-6789</loan:socialSecurityNumber>
 <loan:amountRequested>15000</loan:amountRequested>
 <loan:loanDescription>Application to finance the purchase of a Toyota Prius</loan:loanDescription>
 <loan:otherInfo>Down payment is US$7500</loan:otherInfo>
 <loan:responseEmail>john.smith@example.com</loan:responseEmail>
</loan:loanProcessRequest>
--the_boundry
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-ID: <part2_id>
[...Text Attachment Content...]
--the_boundry
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Content-ID: <part3_id>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: BASE64
Content-Description: Picture A
[...Image Content...]
--the_boundry--

For testing, you can use any HTTP client testing tool available to you. For example, SOAP-UI, cURL (a popular command line tool:

http://curl.haxx.se/

) and RESTClient (see

http://code.google.com/p/rest-client/

), a Java based application to test RESTful web services.

XML Binding

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