SOAP Client Generator for Objective-C from WSDL?

Question

I'm stuck on a SOAP integration project. I need to call some SOAP Web Services from an iPad app.

I have the WSDL, and I need to generate the Objective-C classes to invoke the service calls.

The Mac developer library has an "Example: Calling a SOAP Operation with HTTP Authentication", but the sample code it links to is broken (SOAP_AuthExample.dmg, 404).

The Web Services Core Programming Guide even says (emphasis added):

"Currently, OS X provides no high-level support for extracting SOAP functions from WSDL files. You can use NSXMLParser to read a WSDL file into memory from a URL, however. It is then relatively simple to search the file for a particular method name or to find a URL associated with a service. With a bit more effort, you can extract method names, data types, and parameter names to build a SOAP call. You can then use the Web Services Core framework to make SOAP calls and parse the responses."

I've also found the following three generators; however, the first is throwing an error about some missing files, the second's code generates and endless stream of ARC errors when I try to build (and a refactor is not working), and the third is paywalled.

1. http://easywsdl.com/
2. https://code.google.com/p/wsdl2objc/
3. http://sudzc.com/

Can anyone steer me in the right direction?

Answer 1

I was in your same situation a couple of months ago, and I'm currently working in an iPad app that requires to connect to a SOAP service. I already have the classes, but they are specific for my project and I'm not authorised to share it. However, I'm making a more generic Objective-C class (in any case the final solution for all the SOAP servers) to share it with the world on Github.

First of all you have to set the SOAP message. It has a common structure like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soap:Header>
    // here comes the header information: credentials, connection information. If needed, of course
</soap:Header>
<soap:Body>
    // here comes the request parameters. In my case, these parameters are related to a resource called SOAPAction (That identifies the method to be called. e.g getListOfClients). I don't know if it is the same in all servers
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

I say to you, the company for which I'm making the app, has provided me with the methods and authentication information. I don't know if this is your case, but you have here a general glance of what to do.

I use AFNetworking to send the request, in this way:

NSString *messageLength = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%lu", (unsigned long)[msg length]];

NSURL *requestURL = [NSURL URLWithString:self.requestURL];
NSMutableURLRequest *theRequest = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:requestURL cachePolicy:NSURLRequestReloadIgnoringLocalCacheData timeoutInterval:30];
[theRequest addValue:[requestURL host] forHTTPHeaderField:@"Host"];
[theRequest addValue:@"text/xml; charset=utf-8" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Type"];
[theRequest addValue:soapAction forHTTPHeaderField:@"SOAPAction"];
[theRequest addValue:messageLength forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Length"];
[theRequest setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
[theRequest setHTTPBody:[msg dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

// sending the request

AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation = [[AFHTTPRequestOperation alloc] initWithRequest:theRequest];
operation.responseSerializer = [AFHTTPResponseSerializer serializer];
[operation setCompletionBlockWithSuccess:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id responseObject) {
    NSString *xml = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:responseObject encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
    NSLog(@"Take the data master Yoda: %@", xml);
} failure:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error) {
    NSLog(@"Bad SOAP server!. Error: %@", error.description)
}];

[[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] addOperation:operation];

self.requestURL is the server URL, obviously. If the request was successful, then you have the server's xml response ready to parse. If not, a request error description otherwise.

This page helped me a lot to find out a solution for some issues that I encountered, and it is related to the website http://sudzc.com/ that you quotes above:

http://blog.exadel.com/working-with-ios-and-soap/

I hope this helps in any way.