Is it possible to use Java as a client to the SOAP service?

[Jeff]

For the benefit of the community, I'm posting a personal
correspondence between Daniel and myself.

Hi Jeff,

> Is it possible to use Java as a client to the swamp server? Our
> webapp is all Java, so avoiding a system call to the swamp_client.py
> program would be best. I'm guessing your answer is "yes" since it's
> all SOAP stuff, but I don't know the format of the request or the
> format of the response in this case. Thanks again.

I'm sure you can use Java as a client, but I haven't delved into it
thus far. The SOAPpy library we use hides all of the details for us
so we don't have to worry about parameter formats and such. With
SOAPpy, we just think of it in terms of python objects, and magic
happens to do the object packaging.

However, I *have* noticed that the request and response formats seem
fairly straightforwardly mapped. If you play with vanilla SOAPpy code,
you can inspect the response types fairly easily as a client, and the
request types fairly easily as a soap service instance.

Fortunately/Unfortunately there's still a lot of features I want to
add to the swamp service, and it's unclear whether the client-server
API will change. Because of that, you may find it easier to just use
the swamp_client.py and wrap your well-defined Java interface around
it if you need it to be good and stable. Or wait until spring, when I
expect to have the next major features done. The API hasn't really
changed for a while, but I'm hesitant to say that it *won't* change in
the next few months.

Hope this helps,
-Daniel