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I am having confusion around http text 'post' in terms of webservice context. We are having a web service which is built on SOAP protocol, now the integration partner wants to eliminate the SOAP portion of the XML message and wants us to post XML message as 'http text post'.

Is this REST HTTP POST? Please clarify.

Vel
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  • What do you mean by "REST". It's just a POST of XML. Nothing special about it.Also, what technology have you used to write the web service? – John Saunders Apr 27 '15 at 17:35
  • I mean REST as RESTful (representational state transfer) web services. We are Java(J2EE) technology to write the web service. – Vel Apr 27 '15 at 17:45
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    No, they are not talking about REST. They want to POST the same messages as with SOAP but without the SOAP envelope. – John Saunders Apr 27 '15 at 17:46
  • Thanks John. If we remove the SOAP envelope, will it continue to be a SOAP message or can be termed as XML over HTTP message? – Vel Apr 27 '15 at 18:04
  • There's no special name for it. HTTP can be used to send and receive any content type. In this case, the content is just XML without the SOAP protocol. – John Saunders Apr 27 '15 at 18:19

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POST is an HTTP request method, of which there are many (ex. GET, PUT, DELETE, HEAD...). POST is used to submit data to a server for processing, whereas GET (for example) is used to retrieve data for reading. You can read more here. These methods are used for all HTTP communication, whether the target is a SOAP/REST web service or an Apache server hosting a regular website.

SOAP normally operates using POST requests, although it is possible to use GET with SOAP 1.2 as well. GET requests have more restrictive size limitations than POST requests.

Community
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bdunn
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  • How do you know that the integration partner wants to improve performance? It's just as likely that their environment doesn't understand SOAP. – John Saunders Apr 27 '15 at 17:05
  • Edited the phrasing of the answer. The question states that there is an existing SOAP service which implies one is already working in their environment. It is also quite a common practice to switch to plain XML from SOAP to improve performance. – bdunn Apr 27 '15 at 17:11
  • The fact that it's a "common practice" (not attested, BTW), would not imply that it is the reason in this case. – John Saunders Apr 27 '15 at 17:28
  • Their environment is withdrawing the support for SOAP. They use 'curl' to post the messages internally for their and asking us to use any method that best suits for our application. Hope this helps and provide more clarity. – Vel Apr 27 '15 at 17:38
  • Edited the answer to remove the assumption and add more information. – bdunn Apr 27 '15 at 17:41