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what should we use SOAP and when should use REST?

When should we use SOAP and when should we use REST?
Can someone give a justifiable answer to this.
This was asked during an interview. I said it's up to contract with other parties. I don't know whether this is right or wrong. Can someone help with this.
SOAP I mean structure like below.
<?xml version='1.0' Encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
<env:Header>
<m:reservation xmlns:m="http://travelcompany.example.org/reservation"
env:role="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope/role/next">
<m:reference>uuid:093a2da1-q345-739r-ba5d-pqff98fe8j7d</m:reference>
<m:dateAndTime>2007-11-29T13:20:00.000-05:00</m:dateAndTime>
</m:reservation>
<n:passenger xmlns:n="http://mycompany.example.com/employees"
env:role="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope/role/next">
<n:name>Fred Bloggs</n:name>
</n:passenger>
</env:Header>
<env:Body>
<p:itinerary xmlns:p="http://travelcompany.example.org/reservation/travel">
<p:departure>
<p:departing>New York</p:departing>
<p:arriving>Los Angeles</p:arriving>
<p:departureDate>2007-12-14</p:departureDate>
<p:departureTime>late afternoon</p:departureTime>
<p:seatPreference>aisle</p:seatPreference>
</p:departure>
<p:return>
<p:departing>Los Angeles</p:departing>
<p:arriving>New York</p:arriving>
<p:departureDate>2007-12-20</p:departureDate>
<p:departureTime>mid-morning</p:departureTime>
<p:seatPreference></p:seatPreference>
</p:return>
</p:itinerary>
</env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

In very few words, using REST you can describe the same operations you may expect from a database find, insert, update, delete. In REST such operation are paired with the HTTP command: GET, PUT, POST, DELETE. That's also why REST is referred as "state transfer" in the sense that you move objects in/out like in a database, in other words changing the state of your "model".
On the other hand SOAP reflect more a Remote Call Procedure (RPC) where, the message is heavily structured by XML, this means that in SOAP you do not simple transfer data but submit commands. In SOAP you can define, like in a programming language, methods and parameters. Regarding this last point to allow a client to use the "methods" (really are well structured XML messages, with name and parameters) defined by a SOAP service, the same service has to publish an XML document describing what messages and their format it can accept: if the method does not exists, it throws an error like "Service not supported".

Jpos alternative in php

Hi are there any frameworks or libraries in php equivalent to jpos?
I came across JAK8583 php library which can parse and generate ISO 8583 messages.
However I want a php library which can generate ISO 8583 response message for ISO 8583 request message .
Please let me know if there are any.

Hi I don't know any alternative but you can always parse the request and set the response fields on that parsed request.
You can see implementation of ISOMsg.setRespnseMTI as inspiration.
Regards

You can check out this php library for iso8583.
Please note that in general you cannot throw a request at a library and tell it to give you a response that will be useful. You need to populate the response with data that is relevant to the transaction.
So normally you would get the request, create a response from the request, populate the response with relevant data, then send it.

Removing namespace prefix ns1 from xml or Soap Message

I am a beginner in programming so please bear with my lack of knowledge.
I am working on sending and receiving a soap request via HttpsURLConnection. The problem is, the reply from the input stream has namespace declarations and the application does not recognize these.
I take the result from the input stream as text:
def reply = bufferedReader.getText()
but I can also create a Soap Message:
reply = MessageFactory.newInstance(SOAPConstants.SOAP_1_1_PROTOCOL).createMessage(null, conn.getInputStream())
Both methods still give namespace prefix. But I'm not sure if I've missed something. I can manipulate both XML and SoapMessage so any pointers will help.
When I send a request using SoapConnection.connect(), the XML file doesn't contain the prefix. However, when I use HttpsURLConnection, I get these. I cannot use SoapConnection.connect() for other reasons though.
I have been struggling for many hours. Any help is appreciated. Please ask if you need more info.
Thanks,

how to check if a response is in xml format instead of HTML?

Im working with a server which always sends me XML responds. But sometimes when server is lack or something it reports me about it by sending me back a HTML page (it just a html page informing about the error) but i didn't expect that and my XML parser crashed.
Im using DefaultHttpClient() and I do send header like mHttpRequest.setHeader("Accept", "text/xml");
So what is the proper way to ensure i got XML (or other specific format) response?

As Kristian suggested, see if it provides a different Content-Type when HTML is emitted. Failing that I would check for a <?xml... line, as apposed to a doctype or whatever is on the HTML page.

Can you check the content type header on the response?
Something like (if I understand the Android documentation correctly):
"text/xml".equals(httpResponse.getEntity().getContentType().getValue());

Every XML contains document descriptor <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> in the beginning. You can check for this before parsing it.
However, I think you need some error handling and result validation in your parser. Network is not a safe environment - you can easily get a half-broken, malformed, or even forged XML from the network. Good parser should detect that and report corresponding errors, not just crash.

Error while XML parsing with JDOM - Content not allowed in prolog

I get this error while parsing an xml file using JDOM.
What is happening is, I receive a stream of data which is an xml combined with a pdf as an attachment within it. So when I try to create a document of it, this error is thrown.
I tried to print this stream and on the console I get the following, It is with lot of junk chars(the pdf contents) but in Wordpad it looks like -
------=_Part_2_23286828.1296553488632
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
....
....
....
<Attachment>
<URI>Filename.pdf</URI>
</Attachment>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
------=_Part_2_23286828.1296553488632
Content-Type: application/pdf; name="Filename.pdf"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
Content-ID: </Attachment[1]/URI[1]>
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Filename.pdf"
%PDF-1.4
%âãÏÓ
4 0 obj <</Type/XObject/ColorSpace/DeviceRGB/Subtype/Image/BitsPerComponent 8/Width 579/Length 52722/Height 480/Filter/DCTDecode>>stream
ÿØÿà
Please note that the xml between <SOAP-ENV:Envelope> and </SOAP-ENV:Envelope> is well-formed.
How could I go about and create a JDOM document out of it? I guess, by removing the content before and after the xml start/end tags but how in a clean way?
I read that BOMInputStream from Apache IO Commons is helpful but I believe it is in version 2.* and I am using version 1.3.1
I hope this explains my problem, if not pls let me know.
Thank you.
UPDATE
At first I didnt realize it would be this cumbersome.
Actually, I am making a call from one servlet to another(doPost) using HttpURLConnection. The return is in the form of this stream.
Now, I am also trying to explore if in any way I can extract the xml part using some of the methods provided by Http/URLConnection.
Appreciate if anyone could shed some more light on this.

This message conforms to the SOAP with Attachment specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/SOAP-attachments). In java the way to parse these messages is to use an implementation of the SAAJ (Soap with Attachments API for Java: http://download.oracle.com/javaee/5/tutorial/doc/bnbhf.html.) There are a couple of different implementations of SAAJ out there. My personal favorite is the Spring-WS implementation another option is Apache Axiom.
My suggestion to you would be use either Spring-WS or Apache Axis to process this message rather than trying to do it manually from an input stream. Are you trying to do this on the server side or on the client side?