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36.2. Instantiate the WS Endpoint

Overview

In Apache Camel, the CXF component is the key to integrating routes with Web services. You can use the CXF component to create two different kinds of endpoint:
  • Consumer endpoint—(at the start of a route) represents a Web service instance, which integrates with the route. The type of payload injected into the route depends on the value of the endpoint's dataFormat option.
  • Producer endpoint—represents a special kind of WS client proxy, which converts the current exchange object into an operation invocation on a remote Web service. The format of the current exchange must match the endpoint's dataFormat setting.

The cxf:bean: URI syntax

The cxf:bean: URI is used to bind an Apache CXF endpoint to a route and has the following general syntax:
cxf:bean:CxfEndpointID[?Options]
Where CxfEndpointID is the ID of a bean created using the cxf:cxfEndpoint element, which configures the details of the WS endpoint. You can append options to this URI (where the options are described in detail in ). To enable payload mode, you must set the URI option, dataFormat=PAYLOAD.
For example, to start a route with an endpoint in PAYLOAD mode, where the endpoint is configured by the customer-ws bean, define the route as follows:
<route>
    <from uri="cxf:bean:customer-ws?dataFormat=PAYLOAD"/>
    ...
</route>

The cxf:cxfEndpoint element

The cxf:cxfEndpoint element is used to define a WS endpoint that binds either to the start (consumer endpoint) or the end (producer endpoint) of a route. For example, to define the customer-ws WS endpoint in PAYLOAD mode, you define a cxf:cxfEndpoint element as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans ...>
    ...  
    <cxf:cxfEndpoint id="customer-ws"
        address="/Customer"
        endpointName="c:SOAPOverHTTP"
        serviceName="c:CustomerService"
        wsdlURL="wsdl/CustomerService.wsdl"
        xmlns:c="http://demo.fusesource.com/wsdl/CustomerService/"/>
    ...
</beans>
Note
In the case of PAYLOAD mode, you do not need to reference the SEI and you must specify the WSDL location instead. In fact, in PAYLOAD mode, you do not require any Java stub code at all.

Address for the Jetty container

Apache CXF deploys the WS endpoint into a Jetty servlet container instance and the address attribute of cxf:cxfEndpoint is therefore used to configure the addressing information for the endpoint in the Jetty container.
Apache CXF supports the notion of a default servlet container instance. The way the default servlet container is initialized and configured depends on the particular mode of deployment that you choose. For example the OSGi container and Web containers (such as Tomcat) provide a default servlet container.
There are two different syntaxes you can use for the endpoint address, where the syntax that you use effectively determines whether or not the endpoint is deployed into the default servlet container, as follows:
  • Address syntax for default servlet container—to use the default servlet container, specify only the servlet context for this endpoint. Do not specify the protocol, host, and IP port in the address. For example, to deploy the endpoint to the /Customer servlet context in the default servlet container:
    address="/Customer"
  • Address syntax for custom servlet container—to instantiate a custom Jetty container for this endpoint, specify a complete HTTP URL, including the host and IP port (the value of the IP port effectively identifies the target Jetty container). Typically, for a Jetty container, you specify the host as 0.0.0.0, which is interpreted as a wildcard that matches every IP network interface on the local machine (that is, if deployed on a multi-homed host, Jetty opens a listening port on every network card). For example, to deploy the endpoint to the custom Jetty container listening on IP port, 8083:
    address="http://0.0.0.0:8083/Customer"
    Note
    If you want to configure a secure endpoint (secured by SSL), you would specify the https: scheme in the address.

Specifying the WSDL location

The wsdlURL attribute of the cxf:cxfEndpoint element is used to specify the location of the WSDL contract for this endpoint. The WSDL contract is used exclusively as the source of metadata for this endpoint: there is need to specify an SEI in PAYLOAD mode.