Calling WebService at the Unix command line

5 Comments Published November 11th, 2008 in Java, Linux Tags: .

Recently I was implementing a web services client to integrate two different systems. To track problems and report bugs, I found quite useful to have scripts invoking the server to verify the response and reproduce the issues.
I wrote a set of bash scripts that run isolated and I used them to prototype and verify the calls.

Here is an example that invokes a public Web Service that returns the prime factors of a given number:

#! /bin/sh

ENDPOINT="http://mathertel.de/AJAXEngine/S01_AsyncSamples/CalcService.asmx"

VALUE=1234567890
if [ -n "${1}" ]; then
    VALUE=${1}
fi

curl --silent \\
     --data \\
     @- \\
     --header 'Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8' \\
     --user-agent "" \\
     ${ENDPOINT} <<EOF | xmllint --format -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap12:Envelope
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    xmlns:soap12="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
  <soap12:Body>
    <CalcPrimeFactors xmlns="http://www.mathertel.de/S01_AsyncSamples/">
      <inputText>${VALUE}</inputText>
    </CalcPrimeFactors>
  </soap12:Body>
</soap12:Envelope>
EOF

CalcService.sh

You can specify the number to factorize at the command line, otherwise 1234567890 will be used as default.

This is a sample response that you get calling the script at the command line:

luigi@luigi-laptop:~$ ./CalcService.sh
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <soap:Body>
    <CalcPrimeFactorsResponse xmlns="http://www.mathertel.de/S01_AsyncSamples/">
      <CalcPrimeFactorsResult>2 3 3 5 3607 3803</CalcPrimeFactorsResult>
    </CalcPrimeFactorsResponse>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

To execute this script you need to have curl and xmllint installed.

5 Responses to “Calling WebService at the Unix command line”

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1 Kenny Apr 3rd, 2009 at 20:42

Hi, Thank you for this example. But it doesn’t work for me. It looks like I have wrong syntex. Would you help me out? Here is what I have:
#! /bin/sh

ENDPOINT=”http://localhost/test-context-root/TESTWSSoapHttpPort”

VALUE=1234567890
if [ -n "${1}" ]; then
VALUE=${1}
fi

curl –data
@-
–header ‘Content-Type: application/soap xml; charset=utf-8′
–user-agent “”
${ENDPOINT}

1
2
5
2009
3
10
6
2009
3
18
18
GMT

EOF
2 Jacob Sandin Aug 3rd, 2009 at 16:20

thanx for script :)

However it seem the script has linefeeds in curl command wich makes it fail, I fixed this in my own tests.

Below script works for me.

${VALUE}

EOF
>>
3 Luigi Aug 3rd, 2009 at 16:24

Yes, I put the line feeds to make it readable from the div. But you are right, they should be removed in order to make it work.
Wordpress hided the \ at the end of the lines:

curl –silent \
–data \
@- \
–header ‘Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8′ \
–user-agent “” \
${ENDPOINT} <<EOF | xmllint –format -

You can keep the line feeds, and replace them with the \ char. If you like. Unfortunately, I just noticed this now :)
Thanks for spotting it out.
4 Vinidog Mar 8th, 2010 at 18:50

Work Very Nice!!!

Tkx ;-)
5 ahshan md Aug 14th, 2011 at 08:48

hi all

the script is not working for me….plz help

#! /bin/sh

ENDPOINT=”http://mathertel.de/AJAXEngine/S01_AsyncSamples/CalcService.asmx”

VALUE=1234567890
if [ -n "${1}" ]; then
VALUE=${1}
fi

curl –silent \
–header ‘Content-Type: application/soap xml; charset=utf-8′ \
${ENDPOINT} <<EOF | xmllint –format -

${VALUE}

EOF

ERROR :-

./CalcService.sh: 13: –header: not found
./CalcService.sh: 13: http://mathertel.de/AJAXEngine/S01_AsyncSamples/CalcService.asmx: not found
warning: failed to load external entity “–format”
-:1: parser error : Document is empty

^
-:1: parser error : Start tag expected, ‘<' not found

^
I/O error : Invalid seek