Stubby the web services slayer..
Category Software review
OK..so that was a bad joke relating to the movie "Buffy the Vampire slayer". My movie plays out with the Java (bad) guys coming to me with a web service that they wanted us to call to get and put some XML I don't have a lot of experience with web services, but those who've tried calling web services from a Notes client will know how difficult or impossible this can be to get working. We were almost at the point of asking them to write some special code for us since we couldn't get the web service calls working when I decided to try the OpenNTF app posted by Julian Robichaux called Stubby which generates a stub that you can use to call standard web services.
We downloaded the app, opened it in Notes, pointed the app to the WSDL file for the web service and it generated a bunch of java files that you can use for your reference and a small single jar file (under 40kb) which is all that needs to be included in the Java agent. It also generates the stub java code that you can copy and paste into the java agent. Once you include the jar file generated and the java code, it just works..and your Notes client becomes a web services consumer. The only caveat is that it works only with Notes 7.x clients and not with Notes 6.x but since we were using Notes 7 anyway that was not a problem. It's an amazing app - for those who are trying to use Notes as a consumer of web services, be sure to try it out. Hopefully in future releases of Notes we will see Notes be a better web services consumer.
Thanks Julian!
OK..so that was a bad joke relating to the movie "Buffy the Vampire slayer". My movie plays out with the Java (bad) guys coming to me with a web service that they wanted us to call to get and put some XML I don't have a lot of experience with web services, but those who've tried calling web services from a Notes client will know how difficult or impossible this can be to get working. We were almost at the point of asking them to write some special code for us since we couldn't get the web service calls working when I decided to try the OpenNTF app posted by Julian Robichaux called Stubby which generates a stub that you can use to call standard web services.
We downloaded the app, opened it in Notes, pointed the app to the WSDL file for the web service and it generated a bunch of java files that you can use for your reference and a small single jar file (under 40kb) which is all that needs to be included in the Java agent. It also generates the stub java code that you can copy and paste into the java agent. Once you include the jar file generated and the java code, it just works..and your Notes client becomes a web services consumer. The only caveat is that it works only with Notes 7.x clients and not with Notes 6.x but since we were using Notes 7 anyway that was not a problem. It's an amazing app - for those who are trying to use Notes as a consumer of web services, be sure to try it out. Hopefully in future releases of Notes we will see Notes be a better web services consumer.
Thanks Julian!
Comments
Posted by Bruce At 03:05:16 PM On 10/02/2006 | - Website - |
I think I need to create a page with a few screenshots showing the whole creation/use process too -- that would probably help people get up and running.
Posted by Julian Robichaux At 10:08:06 AM On 10/02/2006 | - Website - |
So all in I reckon Notes is a pretty good consumer of web services .. I (like you Anil) would just like it to be easier - but thats just it with Notes - it does so many things for you automatically when suddenly you actually have to write code you think its failed you ..
I guess we are waiting for Hannover to see built-in components for web services which would be great .. heres hoping.
Scott
Posted by Scott At 04:45:46 PM On 10/02/2006 | - Website - |