This jQuery module spins up a web interface over the jquery.soap plugin in order to try a SOAP Web Service directly from your web browser.

This module has only one major pre-requisite: the SOAP service has to be exposed through an API Gateway that supports CORS. Hopefully, apicast does !

It is intended to be used in the 3scale developer portal.

Historically, SOAP Services were documented by a WSDL and their associated XSD. However, the level of precision and usefulness allowed by the WSDL and XSD annotations were mere.

That's why SOAP Services were usually accompanied by another documentation, usually a PDF or Word document that describes fields semantic, business scenario that could be implemented, error handling, implementation details. Some examples are usually given.

Those documents are maybe the most useful, in order to understand and use the SOAP Service.

An implementation that only relies on WSDL and XSD to present a "Try it out" feature is doomed to failure. The only example that this implementation can propose is a sample SOAP message with question marks in each field to fill-in.

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
				  xmlns:acme="http://www.acme.com/">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <acme:doThisAndThat>
         <acme:foo>?</gs:foo>
         <acme:bar>?</gs:bar>
      </acme:doThisAndThat>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

But, do I need to fill in the foo field only ? or bar only ? or both ? Which sample values could I use in order to do this and that ?

This project takes another approach that is based on examples. The idea is to re-use the content of existing SOAP documentation (the meaty PDF or Word documentation).

Most of this content can already be moved to an API Developer Portal, presented as nice-to-read Web Pages.

This project provides a way to document the sample SOAP calls, with an interactive interface where the developer can discover examples when reading the documentation and can try it out directly from the documentation page.

Following this philosophy, the previous example would look like this:

To do this, you have to pass the foo field with bla bla bla. Try it by yourself:

<acme:doThisAndThat xmlns:acme="http://www.acme.com/">
   <acme:foo>123456</gs:foo>
</acme:doThisAndThat>

To do that, you have to pass the bar field with bla bla bla. Try it by yourself:

<acme:doThisAndThat xmlns:acme="http://www.acme.com/">
   <acme:bar>ABCDEF</gs:bar>
</acme:doThisAndThat>

The result is a business documentation with real world examples that can be tried out by the developer.

Load the following files in the 3scale Developer Portal, by creating new pages with the following parameters:

All those pages share the same common parameters:

• Layout: Leave empty
• Liquid enabled: unchecked
• Handler: Leave empty

Then, create a new page to hold the documentation of your SOAP Service with the following parameters:

• Section: . Root
• Layout: Main Layout
• Path: something like /docs/my_soap_service
• Content Type: text/html
• Liquid Enabled: unchecked
• Handler: Leave empty

In the content, make sure to have at the top of your page:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/soapui.css">
<script type='text/javascript' src='/javascripts/jquery.soap.js'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='/javascripts/vkbeautify.js'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='/javascripts/soapui.js'></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
    $(document).ready(function() {
      $.soapui($(".soapui"), {
          url: 'http://api.acme.test/ws',
          enableLogging: true,
          appendMethodToURL: false
      }, $.threescale_authentication);
    });
</script>

And then write your documentation as usual:

<h2>Description of our SOAP service</h2>
blablabla
<h2>The getCountry method</h2>
Here is what does the getCountry method. Blablabla.

When you want to insert an example, write:

<div class="soapui">
<soap-action>http://acme.com/getCountry</soap-action>
<soap-body>
<!--
<gs:getCountryRequest xmlns:gs="http://spring.io/guides/gs-producing-web-service">
<gs:name>Spain</gs:name>
</gs:getCountryRequest>
-->
</soap-body>
</div>

Where the soap-action tag holds the value of the soapAction header and soap-body holds the SOAP Body (so, without the SOAP envelope) as a comment block.

If you would like to give a try to this project without having a 3scale API Management account or in order to develop more conveniently, you can use the index.html test page.

First of all, clone this repository and the needed submodules:

git clone https://github.com/nmasse-itix/soapui.git
cd soapui
git submodule init
git submodule update

Then, modify the index.html page to point to your sample SOAP service. You can also provide an API Key if you need one.

$.soapui(e, {
  url: 'http://api.acme.test/ws',
  HTTPHeaders: { "user-key": "<your user-key here>" },
  enableLogging: true,
  appendMethodToURL: false
});

And fire your favourite web server:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Target your web browser to http://localhost:8000/ and you are ready to go!

Note: the built-in examples use the Spring Boot SOAP Example service.