How to invoke a Web service using curl

To invoke a Web service using curl you basically just need to post the soap envelope and the required soap action. I needed to invoke a Web service from cron so I wrote this script to do it using this method:

#!/bin/bash
LOG_FILE="/var/log/armcron.log"
echo "<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:arm=\"http://www.com.co.za/ARM/\">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <arm:warnForEndDate/>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>" > /tmp/warnForEndDate
echo "<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:arm=\"http://www.com.co.za/ARM/\">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <arm:revokeForEndDate/>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>" > /tmp/revokeForEndDate

curl -H 'SOAPAction: "http://www.com.co.za/ARM/warnForEndDate"' -X POST -H 'Content-Type: text/xml;charset=UTF-8' -d @/tmp/revokeForEndDate http://localhost:8080/armws/services/ARM/ >> $LOG_FILE 2>&1

Novell RBPM Logging Configuration to Debug Workflow

Set the following log levels to trace to debug the workflow:

- com.novell.soa.af.impl
- com.novell.soa.script

How not to do XML

This is some sample XML I get from a customers Web service. In my opinion this is a prime example on how not to represent data using XML.

  <ImplementorList>
               <Implementor xsi:nil="true">
                  <ArrayOfImplementorItem>
                     <OID xsi:nil="true"/>
                     <Name xsi:nil="true"/>
                     <Email xsi:nil="true"/>
                  </ArrayOfImplementorItem>
               </Implementor>
               <OID>
                  281527649831711
                  <Implementor>
                     <ArrayOfImplementorItem>
                        <OID xsi:nil="true"/>
                        <Name xsi:nil="true"/>
                        <Email xsi:nil="true"/>
                     </ArrayOfImplementorItem>
                  </Implementor>
               </OID>

A Dell Rolling in the Deep

Go Well Go Dell!

Effective Writing Skills

Found this a while ago, but it's still very good material on effective writing skills.

Click here

My VPN Speed for Today

Not too bad, just need to see where the 102ms ping is coming from.