Can we implement method overloading in web service class?

Question

I would like to implement method overloading in the Java web service class as follows:

public String myMethod(User user)
{
    // My code
} 

public String myMethod(User[] user)
{
    for(int i=0; i<user.length; i++)
    {
        myMethod(user[i]);
    }
}

If I forward a single User object to myMethod(), it should trigger the first method and if I send an array of Users, it should trigger the second method.

In the WSDL file it shows only a single method. However, if I try to call @WebMethod(operationName="") for both calls, I am unable to generate the WSDL file.

Answer 1

Operation overloading is not allowed for web services.
It is explicitely prohibited in WS-BP and WSDL 1.2 also disallows it.
Even if you found a stack that has some support for this I would recommend not to follow this approach.
Overloading is an OO concept. Don't try to apply them to Service Oriented paradigm

Answer 2

Overloading the web service methods is not difficult. With Axis 1.4 at least it is fairly simple. If there are two overloaded methods in the service like below:

public String myMethod(String firstName, String lastName) throws RemoteException
public String myMethod(String name) throws RemoteException

Then a request like this:

http://localhost:8080/services/testService?method=myMethod&name=<name> 

will invoke the second method.

And a request like this one:

http://localhost:8080//services/testService?method=myMethod&firstName=<first_name>&lastName=<last_name>

will invoke the first method.

The resolution is done by Axis.