4/17/21

Modernize SOAP Web Service with Azure API Management

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is an XML based protocol standard to build Web Services. It provides a communication channel for data exchange between applications that are built with different technologies. As a result, most companies have invested heavily in building SOAP Web Services.

SOAP, however, has not been the de facto approach for building modern Web application for some time now.  With the creation of new protocols and standards, REST (Representational State Transfer) and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) are now widely used for new projects, leaving SOAP services mostly on maintenance or support mode only.

ozkary-apim-gateway-soap


SOAP began to lose momentum because of its limitations. The XML message format is a verbose compared to the JSON format. SOAP is also tightly coupled as the client-server communication uses a strict contract definition, WSDL (Web Service Description Language). RESTful APIs in contrast provide an architectural style with loose guidelines and supports several message formats like plain text, XML, JSON, HTML.

Replacing a SOAP Service

The decision to replace a SOAP service with other technologies can be a challenging one. Depending on how complex the project is, it may just be a tremendous investment full of risks for any company. In addition, there are the operation cost to support the new technology and still support clients that cannot migrate to the new API definition.

Some companies may also have the argument that their APIs are doing a great job, and they do not need to be updated with new technology.  For some clients, however, it may be a risk to take on an integration investment with a company that supports, what many perceive as, older technology, or that there are security limitations. Luckily for situations like this, there are alternatives that can meet both sides of the argument.

Modernize a SOAP API

With the growth of cloud technology, there are ways to modernize a legacy API without having to re-write the API which immediately becomes very appealing as this effort saves companies with project management and implementation cost.  For a solution like this, we need a system that can provide a reverse-proxy and document format mapping capabilities.  Azure cloud provides the perfect solution with the API Management service offering.

API Management (APIM) Service

Azure APIM service accelerates this kind of solutions by providing multiple capabilities which enables the managing of APIs by protecting the resources with authentication, authorization, IP Whitelisting, and usage limits. It also provides reverse-proxy capabilities which enable companies to publish REST-based APIs by creating Open API endpoints which act as façade for the legacy systems. It supports the transformation of XML documents into JSON documents and Vice-Versa which makes it the obvious solution for modernizing a legacy SOAP API.

Modernization Process

The process to modernize a legacy SOAP API is much simpler and takes lot of less effort than to take on a rewriting effort. This is mostly due to the metadata reading capabilities of the APIM service. The process starts by importing a WSDL document into the service which reads the metadata to create facades with mapping policies for inbound and outbound stages of the request lifecycle.  The façade is the Open API definition of the RESTful service. The mapping policies enable the mapping and transformation of JSON to XML documents for inbound processing as well as XML to JSON transformation for outbound processing. The Inbound stage handles the JSON payload request which needs to be transformed into XML, so it can be proxied to the legacy SOAP API.  The outbound stage handles the XML response from the legacy SOAP service, and it transforms the response into a JSON document, so the client application can consume it.

Sample Process

Now that there is a good conceptual understanding of the approach, let’s look at a practical example by using a publicly available SOAP API which returns a list of continents by name.  Note that any other SOAP API can be used instead as the process is really the same. Let’s review the SOAP API specifications for this Web service.

Service endpoint:

http://webservices.oorsprong.org/websamples.countryinfo/CountryInfoService.wso

Open or use any tool like Postman that can enable sending API requests to the service. Send a POST request with this header Content-Type: text/xml.  Also add the following for the request body payload.

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<soap12:Envelope xmlns:soap12="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">

  <soap12:Body>

    <ListOfContinentsByName xmlns="http://www.oorsprong.org/websamples.countryinfo">

    </ListOfContinentsByName>

  </soap12:Body>

</soap12:Envelope>

 

The expected response should be an XML document that looks as follows:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">

    <soap:Body>

        <m:ListOfContinentsByNameResponse xmlns:m="http://www.oorsprong.org/websamples.countryinfo">

            <m:ListOfContinentsByNameResult>

                <m:tContinent>

                    <m:sCode>AF</m:sCode>

                    <m:sName>Africa</m:sName>

                </m:tContinent>

                <m:tContinent>

                    <m:sCode>AN</m:sCode>

                    <m:sName>Antarctica</m:sName>

                </m:tContinent>

                <m:tContinent>

                    <m:sCode>AS</m:sCode>

                    <m:sName>Asia</m:sName>

                </m:tContinent>

                <m:tContinent>

                    <m:sCode>EU</m:sCode>

                    <m:sName>Europe</m:sName>

                </m:tContinent>

                <m:tContinent>

                    <m:sCode>OC</m:sCode>

                    <m:sName>Ocenania</m:sName>

                </m:tContinent>

                <m:tContinent>

                    <m:sCode>AM</m:sCode>

                    <m:sName>The Americas</m:sName>

                </m:tContinent>

            </m:ListOfContinentsByNameResult>

        </m:ListOfContinentsByNameResponse>

    </soap:Body>

</soap:Envelope>

 

On Postman, this configuration with the request and response should look like this:

ozkary-postman-soap-api

This example uses XML envelopes for the request and response. To modernize this API, we can import the WSDL definition of the API into Azure APIM. To get the WSDL file, just add the wsdl parameter to the query string and send a GET request. The response should be an XML schema file which describes the API operations and data types.

http://webservices.oorsprong.org/websamples.countryinfo/CountryInfoService.wso?wsdl

Import the WSDL

Note: The following steps should be done on a subscription that has an API Management service configured.

To import the API schema definition into APIM, open Azure Portal, API Management console. Click on the API link to open the existent API definitions. From this view, click on Add API and select the WSDL option. Configure the popup information as shown on the image below. Make sure to use the URL that has the wsdl parameter on the query string. When ready, press create to generate the API definition with policies.

Note: Make sure to use the URL that has the wsdl parameter on the query string

ozkary-import-wsdl

A new API with the name of ContryInfoService should get created. Click on that name to display the operations that are available from this API. Check the settings for this API and make a note of the Base URL. This is the URL that should be used to send request to the new API.

 We are interested in finding the ListOfContinentsByName operation. This is the same API that we use for the Postman validation.  Once selected, review the inbound and outbound policies by clicking on the code icon as shown below:

ozkary-apim-policy

Policy File

APIM Policy Gist

The policy has an inbound and outbound node. The inbound node uses a liquid template to transform the incoming payload into a SOAP envelope which is required by the SOAP service.  The outbound node also uses a liquid template to transform the XML response into a JSON payload which is then sent back to the calling application. The markup use on the liquid template has many features, and we could no cover all the details here.  For this simple example, we can see how a new JSON document is created by adding the items from the continents collection.

We should now have a JSON API ready, but we are not yet RESTful. The SOAP service requires documents to be send for every request, as a result it uses POST request method for even reading information. A RESTful service should instead be able to get the continent information using a GET request method instead of using POST which should only be used for creating new resources. We should remove that constraint by using APIM to change that configuration as well. Let’s load the operation settings and click on the Frontend configuration. From this configuration, we can change the request method from POST to GET, and even change the URL route to something that aligns with our naming conventions. Also notice that on the inbound policy, we add the set-method policy to indicate that even if the request came in as a GET request, we want to forward this as a POST request which is what the SOAP API expects. The new setting should look as follows:

ozkary-change-api-operation

All should be setup to make requests to the new API. If no extra configuration was done like adding a subscription key, and the APIM resource was not created in a private subnet, we should be able to access the API from the internet. Let’s load our tool of choice and make a request to the new API. Get the Base URL from the setting and append the operation name. That is the new RESTful route. We can now configure a request with the header Content-Type: application/json and set the method to GET. There is no need to add anything on the body as there is no JSON payload to send during a GET operation. This is what the new configuration should look like.

ozkary-apim-json-response

As we can see the results show a list of continents, but instead of showing an XML document it is now showing the data on a JSON document.

Conclusion

Modernizing a legacy SOAP API can be a very expensive and long project. In cases when it is needed to accelerate the solution and minimize the risks, Azure API Management provides a solid approach. This service provides capabilities to create a REST-Base API, policies to handle document transformation and enhances the security of the APIs. All this can be achieved without having to decommission the existent legacy SOAP API and getting a business to provide modern APIs to its customers.

Originally published by ozkary.com

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