Java Spring Web Service Client Fault Handling

Question

I have written a web service client (using Java Spring and JAXB Marshaller) that works with the UPS web service. When I send a valid request everything works well. When I send an invalid request (weight > 150 lbs) then the UPS web service responds with a SOAP Fault. The client application just fails with a

org.springframework.oxm.UnmarshallingFailureException: JAXB unmarshalling 
exception; nested exception is javax.xml.bind.UnmarshalException: 
unexpected element (uri:"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/", local:"Fault").

Obviously my program isn't able to decipher the SOAP fault returned by the web service. I wrote a custom FaultMessageResolver, but it doesn't get invoked. Here's the code:

public class UpsRateClient extends WebServiceGatewaySupport {
    public UpsRateClient(WebServiceMessageFactory messageFactory) {
        super(messageFactory);
        getWebServiceTemplate().setFaultMessageResolver(new UpsFaultMessageResolver());
    }

    public RateResponse getRate(RateRequest rateRequest) {
        return (RateResponse) getWebServiceTemplate().marshalSendAndReceive(rateRequest, new UpsRequestWSMC());
    }
    private class UpsFaultMessageResolver implements FaultMessageResolver {
        public void resolveFault(WebServiceMessage message) throws IOException{
            System.out.println("Inside UpsFaultMessageResolver");   
        }
    }
}

Thanks for your time!

Answer 1

Take a wireshark trace.My thought is that perhaps the web service sends the SOAP fault using (erroneously) a HTTP 200OK instead of a 500 Internal Server error and your client tries to handle it as a valid response.
If this is the case this is then the problem lies in the web service which does not addere to SOAP standard(my emphasis):
From SOAP RFC

In case of a SOAP error while processing the request, the SOAP HTTP server MUST issue an HTTP 500 "Internal Server Error" response and include a SOAP message in the response containing a SOAP Fault element (see section 4.4) indicating the SOAP processing error.

If you do not own the web service, they should fix this.
To be honest I am not sure what the work arround would be in Spring-WS.
If I really needed a work arround in Jax-Ws I would replace the stub call with a Dispatcher to handle the raw xml myself and avoid the automatic marshal/demarhal.
Look into Spring-Ws if you can do the same, but this is a bug of the web service, not your client

Answer 2

I had the same problem (SOAP error with HTTP 200OK) and I solved it setting the CheckConnectionForFault property to false. See.