Overview of WSDL 1.1 Document Structure

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∟Overview of WSDL 1.1 Document Structure

This section describes the high level structure of a WSDL 1.1 document, an XML document with 'definitions' as the root element, and 'types', 'message', 'portType', 'binding', 'service' as top level elements.

As we learned earlier, WSDL 1.1 uses 7 layers of components to define a Web service: Types, Message, Operation, Port Type, Binding, Port, and Service.

These 7 layers of WSDL 1.1 components are written in an XML document following these rules:

"definitions" is the root element.
"types" is top level element served as a container representing the Types component.
"message" is top level element served as a definition representing a Message component.
"portType" is top level element served as a definition representing the Port Type component, which contains a group of Operation components.
"binding" is top level element served as a definition representing the Binding component.
"service" is top level element served as a definition representing the Service component, which contains a group of Port components.

The structure of a WSDL 1.1 XML document can be illustrated as:

<definitions ...>
  <types>
    ...
  </types>

  <message ...>
    ...
  </message>
  <message ...>
    ...
  </message>

  <portType ...>
    <operation ...>
      <input>
        ...
      </input>
      <output>
        ...
      </output>
      ...
    </operation>
  </portType>

  <binding ...>
    <operation ...>
      <input>
        ...
      </input>
      <output>
        ...
      </output>
      ...
    </operation>
  </binding>

  <service ...>
    <port ...>
      ...
    </port>
    ...
  </service>

</definitions>