OK, I modified Dave's script thus:

<%params = {Dave}; xml.rpc ("127.0.0.1", 1234, "radio.helloWorld", @params, protocol:SOAP, soapAction:"/examples")%>

Note the change in the port number (so I can capture the messages) and in the protocol.

And now have a helloWorld.txt in *both* the H:Program FilesRadio UserLandWeb Services and H:Program FilesRadio UserLandWeb Servicesexamples.  But I still get a Macro error as the name "helloWorld" hasn't been defined.  So I can't see what SOAP responses are generated, but here's the request (some white space added for readability):

<?xml version="1.0"?> <SOAP-ENV:Envelope SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" 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" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"> <SOAP-ENV:Body> <helloWorld> <param1 xsi:type="xsd:string">Dave</param1> </helloWorld> </SOAP-ENV:Body> </SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

Note the lack of a namespace on the body. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for implementations like Apache SOAP to interoperate for reasons I detail here. The good news is that the situation gets a bit better in Axis.

  12:54:36 PM    

Dave has written an excellent article.  It tells how easy it is to create web services with Radio 8.  And he is right, it truly is easy.  I wish that was the whole story and I could be done with it.  Unfortunately, I have one question.

Without the answer to that question, I can't access the web services using the SOAP stack I have participated in developing - Apache Axis.  There may be other questions too, like what are the parameter names?  These are the types of problems we faced last April when a bunch of soapbuilders got together.  SOAP stack A would interop well with SOAP stack A.  SOAP stack B would interop well with SOAP stack B.  SOAP stack A's messages were 100% SOAP compliant.  So were SOAP stack B's.  But SOAP stack A didn't interop well with SOAP stack B because they both were based on different assumptions.

I don't have a secret decoder ring.  I can't read your mind.  On the other hand, I'm sure I can capture the wire messages that are sent back and forth by Radio and reverse engineer them successfully.  And I undoubtedly will find that the assumptions you made were simple and reasonable.  Unfortunately, there are several dozen SOAP implementations, each with different, simple (to them), and reasonable (to them) assumptions.

The solution is simple.  Documentation.  Preferably in an XML format.  One with lots of room for human readable content.  This is the second cable that we need to hoist as a part of this bootstrap process.

  9:49:53 AM