Consumed Web Services

Last modified: August 20, 2024

Introduction

This document describes imported web services. For further information on the consumed web services screen, see Consumed Web Service.

Web Services

Web services (see also Wikipedia) are a way of exposing or absorbing functions and data entities between systems. They can be used to enable applications to “talk” to each other through the network (or internet).

Mendix supports the interaction between servers using SOAP. This can either be Mendix-to-Mendix, Mendix-to-ThirdParty or ThirdParty-to-Mendix.

Consumed Web Services

Using third party web services is easy in Mendix. There is a microflow activity available which calls a web service on another system and imports the XML in the Mendix database.

Published web Services

To expose functionality in a Mendix Server (thus enabling other systems to make use of certain functions) a microflow can easily be published as a web service. For further information, see Published Web Services.

XML

To enable systems to understand each other, a standard way of “encoding” data is needed. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a format in which data is encoded (or wrapped) so that both parties understand what the message means. The following is a simple example of XML coding:

<person>
	<name>John Smith</name>
	<age>23</age>
	<address>
		<street>Dopeylane 14</street>
		<city>Worchestire</city>
	</address>
</person>

In this case, the object ‘person’ is described with the corresponding values for the attributes ’name’, ‘age’ and the referred object ‘address’.

XML can be used in Mendix for serialization and de-serialization in order to export and import data.

See XML Schemas for further information on importing XSDs into your application. See Import Mappings for further information on mapping XML documents to domain model entities and Export Mappings for further information on exporting domain entities as XML.

SOAP

In the enterprise market, SOAP (see also Wikipedia) is a common protocol for web services. It defines a standard way for systems to communicate with each other. XML is used as the message format.

XSD

An XSD (XML Schema Definition) document is a document that describes how the XML is structured so that both parties know what the message means. An XSD itself is written in XML.

When importing an XSD file into your app, Studio Pro only accepts absolute paths, and the accepted schemes are limited to files or links starting with https or http.

When importing or exporting an XML schema, the XSD file needs to be in your app. If the XML refers to an XSD file that is not in your app, a runtime error will be thrown. Add the XSD file manually to resolve this error.

WSDL

A WSDL (Web Service Definition Language) document is a document that describes how a client can interact with the server that publishes it. It describes the types of messages (incoming and outgoing) and where the messages must be sent to (an endpoint URL).

WDSLs have associated XSD documents that are used to validate the data.

Using imported web services, you can import a web service from an external application to use in your own application. You can import web services from third parties (such as the w3schools example service) or from other Mendix apps.

To use these imported web services in a microflow, see Call Web Service.

Proxies

If you are behind a firewall, you may have to use a proxy to call a web service. Specific information on how to configure the JVM to use a proxy can be found in Using a Proxy to Call a Web Service.

Protocols

Mendix supports consuming web service data according to the following protocols:

  • SOAP 1.1
  • SOAP 1.2
  • MTOM/XOP
  • WS-MetadataExchange v1.1
  • WS-Policy v1.2
  • WS-Policy v1.5
  • WS-PolicyAttachment 1.5
  • WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1
  • WS-Addressing 1.0 (from Mendix 8.16)

To connect to a Microsoft .NET web service, you have to configure your web service to use basicHttpBinding (SOAP 1.1) or wsHttpBinding (SOAP 1.2). For a secure connection, you have to configure SSL and to set the security mode to Transport with clientCredentialType Basic in the web.config file. The user credentials can be configured in Studio Pro as a Call Web Service activity as described in Use HTTP authentication.