How to develop CXF Web services with JBoss

Please note, this article has been written for JBoss AS 5 so the content might not be suitable for the latest version of the application server.
For WildFly users, we recommend checking this article: SOAP Web services on WildFly made simple

JBoss AS 5 ships with Apache CXF web services implementation. In this tutorial we will show how to create a simple Web service endpoint and how to deploy and test it with a client.

Apache CXF is an open source services framework. CXF helps you build and develop services using frontend programming APIs, like JAX-WS and JAX-RS. These services can speak a variety of protocols such as SOAP, XML/HTTP, RESTful HTTP, or CORBA and work over a variety of transports such as HTTP, JMS or JBI.

Developing the Web service

Firstly, create a new Web Project from your IDE.

Then, we will add at first the Web services an interface which will be used by our implementation.

package com.sample;

import javax.jws.WebMethod;
import javax.jws.WebService;

@WebService
public interface Math {
 @WebMethod
 public long sum(long a, long b);
}

Next, this is the implementation class:

package com.sample;

import javax.jws.WebMethod;
import javax.jws.WebService;

@WebService(endpointInterface = "com.sample.Math", serviceName = "MathWS")

public class MathWS implements Math 
{     

  public long sum(long a, long b) {
    System.out.println("Summing "+a+" + "+b);
    return a+b;
 }
}

Now it’s time to register your Web service. Add your web service in web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app
 version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" 
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">
 <servlet>
  <servlet-name>MathWS</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>com.sample.MathWS</servlet-class>
 </servlet>
 <servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>MathWS</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
 </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

A JAX-WS Endpoint can be also configured using Spring XML file in addition to using the JAX-WS APIs. Once you’ve created your server implementation, you simply need to provide the class name and an address.
Here’s a sample jbossws-cxf.xml

<beans
 xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
 xmlns:jaxws="http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
 http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws
 http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/jaxws.xsd">

 <!-- one or more jaxws:endpoint POJO declarations -->
  <jaxws:endpoint id="MathWS" address="http://localhost:8080/Samplews"  
   implementor="com.sample.MathWS">
  <jaxws:invoker>
    <bean class="org.jboss.wsf.stack.cxf.InvokerJSE"/>
  </jaxws:invoker>
 </jaxws:endpoint>

</beans>

For more details about configuring Apache CXF web services with Apache CXF configuration file, please refer to http://community.jboss.org/wiki/JBossWS-StackCXFUserGuide

Deploy the service. If everything compiled correctly, you should see in the list of the deployed services your mathWS service.

Point the browser at http://localhost:8080/jbossws/services and check it.

Develop a CXF client.

Here’s a minimal client implementation:

package com.sample;

import org.apache.cxf.interceptor.*;
import org.apache.cxf.jaxws.JaxWsProxyFactoryBean;

public class Client {

 public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {

  JaxWsProxyFactoryBean factory = new JaxWsProxyFactoryBean();

  factory.getInInterceptors().add(new LoggingInInterceptor());
  factory.getOutInterceptors().add(new LoggingOutInterceptor());
  factory.setServiceClass(Math.class);
  factory.setAddress("http://localhost:8080/Samplews");
  Math client = (Math) factory.create();

  System.out.println("Server said: " + client.sum(3,4));

 }

}

Notice the use of JaxWsProxyFactoryBean which is a factory for creating JAX-WS proxies. This class provides access to the internal properties used to set-up proxies. Using it provides more control than the standard JAX-WS APIs.