Need to see SOAP messages for client talking to external web service - how to? (Eclipse/Netbeans/IDEA ok)

Question

I have a situation where I have to write a client in Java against a very picky external web service (over https) and I can talk to the web service through the Web Services Explorer in Eclipse JEE.

Unfortunately I cannot get the client to ask properly so I'd really like to see the SOAP messages going back and forth. Being new to web services this is a bit of a jungle. I am very familiar with Eclipse, and have spent some time with Netbeans and IntelliJ.

I'd really, really prefer using the Metro stack as it allows this to run on a stock Java 6, and deployment size matters. Is there a simple way to make Metro log what it does, or make it talk through the TCP/IP monitors in Eclipse and Netbeans? The Metro documentation seems to be primarily targeted at the web service author and not the client, so I might easily have missed it.

Any suggestions for a setup saying "Here is the WSDL - generate me a client where I can see the traffic"?

Answer 1

Just put a proxy or a tcp monitor "in the middle" and you will see the message.

I've been using tcpmon for a similar task.

Answer 2

It was helpful to turn on logging with

-Dcom.sun.xml.ws.assembler.client=true

in the Eclipse launch configuration.