GetSpeech Failed - Incorrect SOAPAction Header Line

SOAP Web Service Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Perl SOAP::Lite for GetSpeech SOAP 1.1 Web Service

∟GetSpeech Failed - Incorrect SOAPAction Header Line

This section provides a tutorial example on how to use a SOAP::Lite client to reach a Web service end point with the proxy parameter. But the test failed because of incorrect SOAPAction value.

In previous SOAP::Lite tutorials, we learned how to create a simple dummy SOAP server, create a simple SOAP client and make them work together.

Now let's try to write a SOAP::Lite client program to talk to a real Web service provided by xmlme.com. This Web service is offered at http://www.xmlme.com/WSShakespeare.asmx with this description: "GetSpeech requires a string formatted phrase from one of Shakespeare's plays as input. The speech, speaker, and play will be returned as an XML string. Sample Shakespeare Phrases: To be, or not to be | ..."

Based on the above description I wrote my first version of GetSpeech.pl:

#- GetSpeech.pl
#- Copyright (c) 2009 HerongYang.com. All Rights Reserved.
#- All rights reserved
#
   use SOAP::Lite +trace;
   my $client = SOAP::Lite->new();
   $client->proxy('http://www.xmlme.com/WSShakespeare.asmx');
   my $som = $client->GetSpeech("To be, or not to be");
   my $output = $som->result;
   print $output . "\n";

When executed, I got this:

herong> GetSpeech.pl
SOAP::Transport::new: ()
SOAP::Serializer::new: ()
SOAP::Deserializer::new: ()
SOAP::Parser::new: ()
SOAP::Lite::new: ()
SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::new: ()
SOAP::Lite::call: ()
SOAP::Serializer::envelope: ()
SOAP::Serializer::envelope: GetSpeech To be, or not to be
...
SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::send_receive: HTTP::Request=HASH(0x...
SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::send_receive: 
POST http://www.xmlme.com/WSShakespeare.asmx
Accept: text/xml
Accept: multipart/*
Content-Length: 479
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
SOAPAction: "#GetSpeech"

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
  xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema"
  SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <GetSpeech>
      <c-gensym3 xsi:type="xsd:string">To be, or not to be</c-gensym3>
    </GetSpeech>
  </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::send_receive: HTTP::Response=HASH(0...
SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::send_receive: 
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Cache-Control: private
Connection: close
Date: ... 2009
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
Content-Length: 1015
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Client-Date: ... 2009
Client-Response-Num: 1
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <soap:Body>
    <soap:Fault>
      <faultcode>soap:Client</faultcode>
      <faultstring>
        System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException: 
          Server did not recognize the value of HTTP Header 
            SOAPAction: #GetSpeech.
        at System.Web.Services.Protocols
          .Soap11ServerProtocolHelper.RouteRequest()
        ...
      </faultstring>
      <detail />
    </soap:Fault>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
...

Obviously, the Web service server failed with a "HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error". It was actually caused by an exception in the Web service process: "System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException: Server did not recognize the value of HTTP Header SOAPAction: #GetSpeech." Here is my quick analysis of the problem:

My test program, GetSpeech.pl generated a SOAP 1.1 request. See the header line of 'Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8' and 'SOAPAction: "#GetSpeech"'.
The value "#GetSpeech" in the "SOAPAction" header line is wrong. It should be "http://xmlme.com/WebServices/GetSpeech" according to the instruction page at http://www.xmlme.com/WSShakespeare.asmx?op=GetSpeech.

One positive result of the test is that my test program did reach the Web service end point at: http://www.xmlme.com/WSShakespeare.asmx. I will modify my program to provide SOAPAction correctly in the next tutorial.