220827 - soapAction set to "" should still generate a soapAction header

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: Web Services, defect)

Description

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

Apache Axis web services seem to expect a soapAction header for each server:

...
<wsdlsoap:operation soapAction=""/>
...

In our low level soap support, to make this work, I need to do:
  SOAPCall.actionURI=" ";

Just doing 
  SOAPCall.actionURI="";
isn't enough.  Our WSDL support has the same issue.  Should be easy to fix, will
take a look at it.

Comment 1

[Michael Westbay]

I don't think that just setting SOAPCall.actionURI=" "; is the right thing to
do.  Axis appears to insert "/theOperation" (where "theOperation" is the
operation's name).  While Axis does ignore this hint, leaving it blank just
doesn't sound right.

Comment 2

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

the WSDL file for the service I have that axis generated tells us to use a empty
soap action.  We seem to not send the soap action header if its set to "".

Comment 3

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

-> moi

Comment 4

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

Attachment: Make soap sent " " to necko as it can't set non-empty headers

After making SOAP only check for IsVoid, I found that necko won't allow empty
headers.  So I now have to sent " " to necko to make it work.

Fixed for async and sync cases of SOAP.

Comment 5

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

cc:ing some soap buddies

Comment 6

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

Attachment: er, right patch this time :)

Comment 7

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

cc: jst, I guess you are a web services peer ;)

Comment 8

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

I tested the patch against an Apache Axis 1.1 running on Tomcat locally btw.

Comment 9

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

So Apache expects there to be a SOAPAction header with the value " ", or would
it be just as happy to not have the header at all? Or what if we'd make necko
accept empty header values? This whole space thing seems like a hack to me,
though I've gotta admit that I don't know all the ins and outs of HTTP headers
and SOAP...

Comment 10

[John Gaunt (redfive)]

I concur. :-) Axis is requiring the field even if it is empty. I would say that
we don't generally want to allow empty headers to be set, but for this
particular case something should be added to allow the empty header. I suppose
that would be in the Necko libraries. My hope would be that we could allow empty
headers only for those implementations that need it.

(To be honest, this really sounds like a bug in Axis, not Mozilla)

Comment 11

[timeless]

the necko api defines a special behavior for empty. that behavior is
used and expected by some clients, so we can't really change it.

Comment 12

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

Right, the " " thing is a hack, because of necko.  Axis should be asking for a
more usefull value, but that is how 1.0 and 1.1 do their WSDL.

Axis requires the SOAPAction header to be sent - currently in mozilla, we get a
SOAPFault telling us we need to send it.  Same for lowlevel soap, we need to set
the actionURI to " " to make it work.

The correct fix is probably to only check IsVoid() in SOAP land and then tell
necko somehow to allow empty headers.

Ans you guys thought web services wouldn't need quirks!

Comment 13

[Darin Fisher]

the hack is only attractive as a stop-gap measure since fixing this correctly
would require rev'ing necko's frozen APIs to allow setting an empty header.

Comment 14

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

Comment on attachment 132554 [details] [diff] [review]
er, right patch this time :)

While I don't really like adding hacks to the SOAP code, I see that there's no
other easy way out here ATM.

sr=jst.

Comment 15

[Darin Fisher]

Comment on attachment 132554 [details] [diff] [review]
er, right patch this time :)

r=darin

Comment 16

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

mkaply checked it in.

Comment 17

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Comment on attachment 132554 [details] [diff] [review]
er, right patch this time :)

a=mkaply for 1.4.2

Comment 18

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Checked into 1.4.2