can i use http with soap?

Question

Allow me to be more specific...

If I want to send files, but am required to wrap them in SOAP, wouldn't I use http? I am seeing a surprisng lack of info on this online.

Answer 1

Pretty vague question but if you're using web services you can use MTOM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTOM (SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism)

I don't know your environment but there are examples of this using .NET / WCF if you Google it.

Answer 2

Sending files via SOAP doesn't have anything specifically to do with FTP. To send a file through a SOAP interface, you might base64 encode the file and stuff the whole thing into a SOAP string parameter. However, this might only be appropriate if your file size has a reasonable upper bound.

If your files can be an unbounded size, you might investigate using a different transport protocol to transfer the actual file data (eg. HTTP or even FTP), then use SOAP to transfer a pointer to the file (such as its URL). Some implementations of SOAP cannot handle arbitrary large messages.

Answer 3

Two standard ways of sending files along with SOAP messages are:

• SOAP with Attachments
• MTOM

MTOM supports either using MIME attachments or base64 encoding the file into the body, where as SOAP with Attachments only supports MIME attachments.