We used the built in soap/wsdlDriver class, which is actually SOAP4R.
It's dog slow, but really simple. The SOAP4R that you get from gems/etc is just an updated version of the same thing.
Example code:
require 'soap/wsdlDriver'
client = SOAP::WSDLDriverFactory.new( 'http://example.com/service.wsdl' ).create_rpc_driver
result = client.doStuff();
Kent Sibilev from Datanoise had also ported the Rails ActionWebService library to Rails 2.1 (and above).
This allows you to expose your own Ruby-based SOAP services.
He even has a scaffold/test mode which allows you to test your services using a browser.
I have used SOAP in Ruby when i've had to make a fake SOAP server for my acceptance tests. I don't know if this was the best way to approach the problem, but it worked for me.
I have used Sinatra gem (I wrote about creating mocking endpoints with Sinatra here) for server and also Nokogiri for XML stuff (SOAP is working with XML).
So, for the beginning I have create two files (e.g. config.rb and responses.rb) in which I have put the predefined answers that SOAP server will return.
In config.rb I have put the WSDL file, but as a string.
So now let me show you how I have actually created the server.
require 'sinatra'
require 'json'
require 'nokogiri'
require_relative 'config/config.rb'
require_relative 'config/responses.rb'
after do
# cors
headers({
"Access-Control-Allow-Origin" => "*",
"Access-Control-Allow-Methods" => "POST",
"Access-Control-Allow-Headers" => "content-type",
})
# json
content_type :json
end
#when accessing the /HaWebMethods route the server will return either the WSDL file, either and XSD (I don't know exactly how to explain this but it is a WSDL dependency)
get "/HAWebMethods/" do
case request.query_string
when 'xsd=xsd0'
status 200
body = @@xsd0
when 'wsdl'
status 200
body = @@wsdl
end
end
post '/HAWebMethods/soap' do
request_payload = request.body.read
request_payload = Nokogiri::XML request_payload
request_payload.remove_namespaces!
if request_payload.css('Body').text != ''
if request_payload.css('Login').text != ''
if request_payload.css('email').text == some username && request_payload.css('password').text == some password
status 200
body = @@login_success
else
status 200
body = @@login_failure
end
end
end
end