wsdl feature the beginning

I wanted to share Tim’s latest blog article Using SOAP with Scala with you guys.

It seems I have inadvertently become “that guy who does SOAP with Scala”.

Also wanted to share a bit of the background. I’d known SOAP was doable because majority of the WSDL is actually XSD, and also @max4f has implemented it. But originally, I was going to wait a while till I implement WSDL/SOAP support. What got me moving quicker was @timperrett’s tweet on 4/26:

Has anyone ever built some kind of monadic abstraction on SOAP? If so, i want to hear your thoughts!

• @chrslws responded “@timperrett Thinking of #scalaquery style API, and some kind of wsdl compiler to gen objs w/ typed query props like @eed3si9n’s scalaxb ..”
• @timperrett wrote “@chrslws Ideally I want to wrap the Java infrastructure… SOAP is a nightmare I would prefer not to deal with at a low level.”
• @max4f also added “@chrslws @timperrett I’ve built a very nice SOAP client using scalaxb, although it’s anything but monadic.”
• @softprops also wrote “@chrslws I brought this up at the last talk @eed3si9n did. As unattractive as soap is, scalaxb looks way sexier than wsimport”
• since I was brought in, I confessed “@softprops @chrslws @max4f I’ve been thinking scalaxb should generate scala code from wsdl out of the box like wsdl2java or xsd.exe”
• @max4f predicted “@eed3si9n @softprops @chrslws I think scalaxb will be seriously on the hook for a standard SOAP client impl if everyone rolls their own.”

All this in one day. Right around the time excitement was building up to Scala Days 2011 (June 2-3).

Next day on 4/27, @timperrett posted:

Oh yeah! Composable SOAP using monads and futures… HELL YEAH #longdaybutworthit

but around a week later 5/6, wrote

Today’s conclusion: I need to write a whole new SOAP stack for Scala. Java data structures are like vomit.

• @tlockney responded “@timperrett I recommend looking at @eed3si9n’s Scalaxb (http://scalaxb.org/). @max4f has had good luck down that path.”
• By the time, Tim must have been thinking what the heck is scalaxb?!
• I wrote “@tlockney @timperrett @max4f I started soap branch for scalaxb. got wsdl in mind I should shoot for? - http://is.gd/CVewXg"

May 29th, right before Scala Days, scalaxb 0.6.0 was released with experimental wsdl 1.1 support.

Several weeks pass by, on June 21st, @timperrett wrote:

The #scalaxb WSDL support is wicked. Got a bunch of custom SOAP handlers setup now… adding finagle tomorrow.

So I guess what I am trying to say, is thank you guys.