JAX-WS Web service on Tomcat without sun-jaxws.xml

Question

I am trying to minimize required configuration while deploying JAX-WS-based Web service on Tomcat. With the introduction of Servlet 3.0 (supported by Tomcat 7+), web.xml

Answer 1

You have to publish the web service. You can implement a ServletContextListener and publish the endpoint:

@javax.servlet.annotation.WebListener 
public class AppServletContextListener implements javax.servlet.ServletContextListener {

    public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent sce) { 
        Endpoint.publish("{protocol}://{host}:{port}/{context}/{wsName}", new MyHelloWorldWSImpl());
    } 

    public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent sce) { 
        .... 
    }
}

sun-jaxws.xml is not mandatory by specs...If you note, for example, glassfish (metro) makes it optional. Also, if you expose a EJB 3.1 as webservice (with jaxws) you can see no sun-jaxws.xml file in the generated build.

Answer 2

I have publised web services successfully by this way. I have used apache cfx for publishing in servletContextListener.

@WebListener
public class WebServicePublisListener implements ServletContextListener {

    /**
     * Default constructor. 
     */
    public WebServicePublisListener() {
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
    }

    /**
     * @see ServletContextListener#contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent)
     */
    public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent sce)  { 
        JaxWsServerFactoryBean srvFactory = new JaxWsServerFactoryBean();
        srvFactory.setServiceClass(RandService.class);
        srvFactory.setAddress("/RandService");
        srvFactory.setServiceBean(new RandServiceImplement());
        srvFactory.create();
    }

Answer 3

To have JAX-WS support in Tomcat you must configure:

• WEB-INF/sun-jaxws.xml
• WSServletContextListener
• WSServlet

Unfortunately it is hard to omit the WEB-INF/sun-jaxws.xml file but there is easier way to omit web.xml configuration because of Servlet 3.0 API.

You can do something like this:

@WebServlet(name = "ServiceServlet" , urlPatterns = "/service", loadOnStartup = 1)
public class Servlet extends WSServlet {

}

and

@WebListener
public class Listener implements ServletContextAttributeListener, ServletContextListener {

    private final WSServletContextListener listener;

    public Listener() {
        this.listener = new WSServletContextListener();
    }

    @Override
    public void attributeAdded(ServletContextAttributeEvent event) {
        listener.attributeAdded(event);
    }

    @Override
    public void attributeRemoved(ServletContextAttributeEvent event) {
        listener.attributeRemoved(event);
    }

    @Override
    public void attributeReplaced(ServletContextAttributeEvent event) {
        listener.attributeReplaced(event);
    }

    @Override
    public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent sce) {
        listener.contextInitialized(sce);
    }

    @Override
    public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent sce) {
        listener.contextDestroyed(sce);
    }
}

I have tested it on Tomcat-8.5.23 version and it works. But remember that you still must have WEB-INF/sun-jaxws.xml file.

<endpoints xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/jax-ws/ri/runtime"
       version="2.0">
    <endpoint name="SampleService"
          implementation="com.ws.ServiceImpl"
          url-pattern="/service" />
</endpoints>

Answer 4

Sadly, the configuration must exist somewhere. That is mandatory, per the source. Believe it or not, the location of the sun-jaxws.xml file is hard-coded to /WEB-INF/sun-jaxws.xml (thanks, guys @ Metro).

Effectively, you need to take control of the following classes

• public final class WSServletContextListener

• public class WSServlet

---

What needs to happen:

1. WSServletContextListener will obviously not be extended. This listener performs most of the initializations per the sun-jaxws.xml and jaxws-catalog file. Like I mentioned earlier, the location is hard coded. So your path of least resistance here is to

   • implement your own vanilla servlet listener (with @WebListener) and call a new WSServletContextListener(). You'll then delegate your own contextInitialized(ServletContext ctxt) and contextDestroyed() methods to the ones in your instance of WSServletContextListener.

   • Generate the file on instantiation of the listener, on the fly, using an @XmlRootElement class that'll represent the sun-jaxws file(I'll provide a sample of this in a short while, don't have the time right now :) ).

It's a lot of trouble for such a dispensable convenience, IMO, but it should work in theory. I'll write some samples and see how they play shortly.