The Java EE 5 Tutorial

Examining the DOMSrcExample Class

DOMSrcExample differs from DOMExample in only a few ways. First, after it parses the document, DOMSrcExample uses the document to create a DOMSource object. This code is the same as that of DOMExample except for the last line:

    static DOMSource domSource;
    try {
        DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document document = builder.parse(new File(args[0]));
        domSource = new DOMSource(document);

Then, after DOMSrcExample creates the message, it does not get the header and body and add the document to the body, as DOMExample does. Instead, DOMSrcExample gets the SOAP part and sets the DOMSource object as its content:

// Create a message
SOAPMessage message = messageFactory.createMessage();

// Get the SOAP part and set its content to domSource
SOAPPart soapPart = message.getSOAPPart();

The example then uses the getContents method to obtain the contents of both the header (if it exists) and the body of the message.

The most important difference between these two examples is the kind of document you can use to create the message. Because DOMExample adds the document to the body of the SOAP message, you can use any valid XML file to create the document. But because DOMSrcExample makes the document the entire content of the message, the document must already be in the form of a valid SOAP message, and not just any XML document.