SOAP Services in Ext JS

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a Web Services standard built on HTTP and XML. The SOAP Ext.data.soap.Proxy and Ext.data.soap.Reader provide a convenient way to create a SOAP request, and load the SOAP response into Ext.data.Store. This guide will show you how to use the SOAP Proxy and Reader to load data from and save data to a fictional SOAP service that provides information about blenders. This guide assumes a basic knowledge of the Ext JS Data Package. This guide assumes you are already somewhat familiar with the Ext JS Data package.

From a SOAP Service to a Store

For starters, let’s take a look at the simplest configuration required to get a Ext.data.Store up and running with SOAP data.

First create a Ext.data.Model.

Ext.define('Blender', {
    extend: 'Ext.data.Model',
    fields: [
        { name: 'id', type: 'int' },
        { name: 'name', type: 'string' },
        { name: 'price', type: 'float' }
    ]
});

Next create the store, proxy and reader.

var store = Ext.create('Ext.data.Store', {
    model: 'Blender',
    proxy: {
        type: 'soap',
        url: 'BlenderService/',
        api: {
            create: 'CreateBlender',
            read: 'GetBlenders',
            update: 'UpdateBlender',
            destroy: 'DeleteBlender'
        },
        soapAction: {
            create: 'http://example.com/BlenderService/CreateBlender',
            read: 'http://example.com/BlenderService/GetBlenders',
            update: 'http://example.com/BlenderService/UpdateBlender',
            destroy: 'http://example.com/BlenderService/DeleteBlender'
        },
        operationParam: 'operation',
        targetNamespace: 'http://example.com/',
        reader: {
            type: 'soap',
            record: 'm|Blender',
            namespace: 'm'
        }
    }
});

Let’s go over the configuration options we just specified. We created a Store that will contain “Blender” model instances. We configured the Store with a SOAP proxy. Lets review the proxy’s options in a bit more detail:

• Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-url - The proxy will use this as the endpoint url for the SOAP service for all 4 CRUD (create, read, update, and destroy) actions. Due to browsers’ same-origin policy this url must be on the same domain, protocol, and port as your Ext JS application. If you need to communicate with a remote SOAP service, you will have to create a server-side proxy on your server that fetches and returns the SOAP response from the remote server.
• Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-api - In a regular Ext.data.proxy.Ajax the api configuration property specifies separate urls for each CRUD action. In a SOAP Proxy, however, the api property is used to configure a SOAP Operation for each CRUD action. Note: you only need to specify an operation for each action that will actually be used in your application. For example, if this proxy is only intended to load data and not to write data, you only need to configure the ‘read’ action.
• Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-soapAction - The SOAP specification requires that every SOAP request contain a SOAPAction HTTP request header. The soapAction config specifies the SOAPAction header that will be sent with each CRUD action. A soapAction must be specified for each SOAP operation that was configured using the api config.

• Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-operationParam - the name of the url parameter that contains the operation name. For example, an operationParam of ‘operation’ would result in a read request url that looks something like this:

  http://example.com/BlenderService/?operation=GetBlenders

• Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-targetNamespace - the target namespace of the SOAP service. This is needed to construct the SOAP envelope.

• Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-reader - The SOAP Ext.data.soap.Reader is responsible for extracting the records from the SOAP response and parsing them into Ext.data.Model instances. The reader’s Ext.data.soap.Reader#cfg-record property is the tagName for the repeated XML element that contains the records in the SOAP response. The reader’s Ext.data.soap.Reader#cfg-namespace property is the XML namepsace prefix for the elements containing the record’s field data.

Loading Records

Now that we have everything configured, loading data into the store is as easy as calling the store’s load method. Behind the scenes this will create a SOAP request to the operation specified by the read property in the proxy’s api configuration property, which is “GetBlenders” in our example. Let’s assume that the GetBlenders SOAP operation requires a “brand” parameter. We can pass the parameter directly to the store’s load method, or if the parameter value is the same for every request we could configure it directly on the proxy using the Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-extraParams config. For this example let’s just pass it to the store’s load method:

store.load({
    params: {
        brand: 'Blendtec'
    }
});

The above call should trigger a post to:

http://example.com/BlenderService/?operation=GetBlenders

Assume that the response to the above request looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <soap:Body>
        <m:GetBlendersResponse xmlns:m="http://example.com/">
            <m:Blender>
                <m:id>1</m:id>
                <m:name>Total Blender Classic WildSide</m:name>
                <m:price>454.95</m:price>
            </m:Blender>
            <m:Blender>
                <m:id>2</m:id>
                <m:name>The Kitchen Mill</m:name>
                <m:price>179.95</m:price>
            </m:Blender>
        </m:GetBlendersResponse>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Let’s pass a callback function to the load call so we can see what the store’s records look like after it is loaded:

store.load({
    params: {
        brand: 'Blendtec'
    },
    callback: function() {
        console.log(store.getCount()); // 2 records were loaded.
        console.log(store.getAt(0).get('name')); // get the name field of the first record.
    }
});

Customizing the SOAP Envelope and Body

Now, using the developer tools in your browser of choice, examine the outgoing XHR requests. You should see a HTTP POST to:

http://example.com/BlenderService/?operation=GetBlenders

Now examine the post body of this request. You should see a SOAP envelope that looks something like this (formatted for readability):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <soap:Body>
        <GetBlenders xmlns="http://example.com/">
            <brand>Blendtec</brand>
        </GetBlenders>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

This SOAP envelope was constructed using the Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-envelopeTpl template and the SOAP body was constructed using the Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-readBodyTpl template. You may need to modify the body template if the SOAP service requires a different format. You won’t typically need to modify the envelope template, but it is cusomizable as well. These configurable templates can each be either an Ext.XTemplate instance or an array of strings to form an XTemplate. The following illustrates using custom templates to change the “soap” envelope namespace prefix to “s”:

proxy: {
    ...
    envelopeTpl: [
        '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>',
        '<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">',
            '{[values.bodyTpl.apply(values)]}',
        '</s:Envelope>'
    ],
    readBodyTpl: [
        '<s:Body>',
            '<{operation} xmlns="{targetNamespace}">',
                '<tpl foreach="params">',
                    '<{$}>{.}</{$}>',
                '</tpl>',
            '</{operation}>',
        '</s:Body>'
    ]
}

Call store.load() again and you should see the post body being generated from the new templates:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <s:Body>
        <GetBlenders xmlns="http://example.com/">
            <brand>Blendtec</brand>
        </GetBlenders>
    </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

Create, Update, and Destroy

Create, update, and destroy requests work almost the same as read requests with the exception of how the SOAP body is constructed. The simple difference is this - read requests construct the SOAP body using a set of parameters, while create, update, and destroy requests construct the SOAP body using a set of records. By default the templates used to create the SOAP body for create, update, and destroy requests are all the same:

[
    '<soap:Body>',
        '<{operation} xmlns="{targetNamespace}">',
            '<tpl for="records">',
                '{% var recordName=values.modelName.split(".").pop(); %}',
                '<{[recordName]}>',
                    '<tpl for="fields">',
                        '<{name}>{[parent.get(values.name)]}</{name}>',
                    '</tpl>',
                '</{[recordName]}>',
            '</tpl>',
        '</{operation}>',
    '</soap:Body>'
]

These templates can be customized using the Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-createBodyTpl, Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-updateBodyTpl, and Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-destroyBodyTpl configuration options as described in the above section on customizing the SOAP envelope and body, or the Ext.data.soap.Proxy#cfg-writeBodyTpl configuration option can be used to apply the same template to all three actions.

To issue a create request first we have to create a new record:

var blender = Ext.create('Blender', {
    name: 'WildSide Jar',
    price: 99
});

Then add the record to the store and call its sync method:

store.add(blender);
store.sync();

This will result in an HTTP POST being issued to the endpoint url with the create operation parameter:

`http://example.com/BlenderService/?operation=CreateBlender`

If you examine the post body of this request you will see that the newly created record has been encoded into the SOAP body:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <soap:Body>
        <CreateBlender xmlns="http://example.com/">
            <Blender>
                <id>0</id>
                <name>WildSide Jar</name>
                <price>99</price>
            </Blender>
        </CreateBlender>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

The response to a create request should include the record as created by the server, so that the record’s id can be updated on the client side. For example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <soap:Body>
        <m:GetBlendersResponse xmlns:m="http://example.com/">
            <m:Blender>
                <m:id>3</m:id>
                <m:name>WildSide Jar</m:name>
                <m:price>99</m:price>
            </m:Blender>
        </m:GetBlendersResponse>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

We can verify that the record has the correct id by checking its id property after the store has been successfully synchronized:

store.sync({
    success: function() {
        console.log(blender.getId()); // 3
    }
});

To update a record just modify one of it’s fields, and then synchronize the store:

store.getAt(0).set('price', 200);
store.sync();

To destroy a record, remove it from the store and then synchronize:

store.removeAt(1);
store.sync();

Just like create actions, if the server response to an update or destroy action includes the record(s) the client side record will be updated with the data in the response.

And that’s all you need to know to get up and running with SOAP and Ext JS. For more details please refer to the API docs for the SOAP Ext.data.soap.Proxy and Ext.data.soap.Reader.

For a working example and full source code see SOAP Grid Example