Web Services Essentials

Fault

In the event of an error, the Body element will include a Fault element. The fault subelements are defined in Table 3-1 and include the faultCode, faultString, faultActor, and detail elements. Predefined SOAP fault codes are defined in Table 3-2. The following code is a sample Fault. The client has requested a method named ValidateCreditCard, but the service does not support such a method. This represents a client request error, and the server returns the following SOAP response:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope 
   xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema">
   <SOAP-ENV:Body>
      <SOAP-ENV:Fault>
         <faultcode xsi:type="xsd:string">SOAP-ENV:Client</faultcode>
         <faultstring xsi:type="xsd:string">
            Failed to locate method (ValidateCreditCard) in class 
            (examplesCreditCard) at /usr/local/ActivePerl-5.6/lib/
            site_perl/5.6.0/SOAP/Lite.pm line 1555.
         </faultstring>
      </SOAP-ENV:Fault>
   </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

Table 3-1. SOAP fault subelements

Element name	Description
faultCode	A text code used to indicate a class of errors. See Table 3-2 for a listing of predefined fault codes.
faultString	A human-readable explanation of the error.
faultActor	A text string indicating who caused the fault. This is useful if the SOAP message travels through several nodes in the SOAP message path, and the client needs to know which node caused the ...