Transport Options

SOAP request/response maps nicely in HTTP, but SOAP has been used with other protocols and, in particular, SMTP. We are also aware of FTP implementations of SOAP.

HTTP Binding

If you remember Listings 7.5 and 7.6, a SOAP request is sent with the POST order. The SOAP response is transmitted with the HTTP response.

HTTP requests and responses contain one or more headers (not to be confused with the SOAP header that appears in the XML document) and one payload. SOAP imposes the use of two headers: Content-Type and SOAPAction.

The Content-Type must be set to text/xml, which is expected because it is the regular type for XML documents. SOAPAction, however, is new. Early in the development of SOAP, it was foreseen that proxies and ...

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