JAX-RPC client with Maven2

Recently I needed to make my Maven2 web project communicate with an old style RPC encoded web service. We run on GlassFish which comes with JAX-RPC RI built-in, so I was hoping to find a way to use it without having to bundle another runtime such as Axis into the project. Specifically I was looking for a way to make my build-script generate client stubs from a WSDL file in the project tree. I want the client stubs to use standardized JAX-RPC APIs which are serviced by the implementation provided by GlassFish.

I found that the JAX-WS RI has a Maven2 plugin but not the JAX-RPC RI. I did a lot of googling, and posted messages in a few mailing lists. Surprisingly there is almost nobody using JAX-RPC on Maven2 projects because there are barely any examples online and nobody could answer my question. I'm surprised because there are a lot of legacy systems out there that developers need to integrate with, so I can't be the only one still needing JAX-RPC support. Some people suggested that I update the web service to modern RPC literal to make client-side development easier with JAX-WS, but that is not an option. Others suggested that I use Maven's antrun plugin to call out to an ant build script that does JAX-RPC work. Finally I found an all Maven solution that works for me:

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.apache.axis</groupId>
   <artifactId>axis</artifactId>
   <version>1.4</version>
   <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
   <groupId>org.apache.axis</groupId>
   <artifactId>axis-jaxrpc</artifactId>
   <version>1.4</version>
   <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
   <groupId>commons-discovery</groupId>
   <artifactId>commons-discovery</artifactId>
   <version>0.4</version>
   <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
   <groupId>wsdl4j</groupId>
   <artifactId>wsdl4j</artifactId>
   <version>1.6.2</version>
   <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

<plugin>
   <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
   <artifactId>axistools-maven-plugin</artifactId>
   <version>1.3</version>
   <executions>
       <execution>
           <goals>
               <goal>wsdl2java</goal>
           </goals>
       </execution>
   </executions>
   <configuration>
       <packageSpace>com.mycompany.service.client</packageSpace>
       <sourceDirectory>src/main/resources/META-INF/wsdl</sourceDirectory>
       <outputDirectory>target/generated-sources/wsdl2java</outputDirectory>
   </configuration>
</plugin>

private MyServiceSEI getMyServicePort() throws ServiceException {
   MyServiceLocator locator = new MyServiceLocator();
   MyServiceSEI port;
   Stub stub;

   port = locator.getMyServiceSEIPort();

   // OPTIONALLY configure URL and HTTP BASIC authentication
   stub = (Stub) port;
   stub._setProperty(Stub.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY, "http://hostname/ContextRoot/ServicePort");
   stub._setProperty(Stub.USERNAME_PROPERTY, "user");
   stub._setProperty(Stub.PASSWORD_PROPERTY, "secret");

   return port;
} 

It works, but I think the client stubs are dependent on the Axis 1 runtime instead of using the GlassFish provided JAX-RPC runtime through the standardized JAX-RPC APIs. I've wasted enough time on this so I moved on. If you know a better way to do this, please let me know. No RESTful services rants please! I think SOAP and REST both have their uses depending on what you are doing. From my perspective, JAX-WS SOAP development is effortless and requires significantly less code than REST because I don't have to write the building/parsing code. After examining raw SOAP messages without extra WS-* headers added in, I decided that overhead is not a valid argument against SOAP. When you need more advanced features they are available to you without having to re-invent the wheel. I think most Java developers' negative impressions on SOAP comes from the JAX-RPC and Axis days, and because they haven't tried JAX-WS yet.

From http://www.ryandelaplante.com/

Ryan deLaplante is a software developer located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been working for IJW Software Corporation for over ten years creating enterprise systems for the hospitality industry. His favorite programming language is Java and mostly blogs about Java Enterprise Edition. Ryan is a DZone MVB and is not an employee of DZone and has posted 11 posts at DZone.