Which is the best maven's plugin to generate a Web Service Client?

Question

I have to generate a WS Client and I can't decide wich plugin to use. Until now my options are: jaxb2-maven-plugin, axistools-maven-plugin and jaxws-maven-plugin.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I prefer CXF and the CXF Codegen Plugin.

Answer 2

I use jaxws-maven-plugin. In my opinion, JAX-WS is the de-facto standard implementation for WS. It has much better generated code than AXIS, and easier to config and implement. It has Maven and Spring support.

I can copy-paste code examples from our pom.xml if needed.

Answer 3

I have to generate a WS Client and I can't decide wich plugin to use. Until now my options are: jaxb2-maven-plugin, axistools-maven-plugin and jaxws-maven-plugin.

First, the jaxb2-maven-plugin is not really intended to generate WS clients. ELIMINATED.

Second, personally I wouldn't use Axis even for client development only so I won't recommend using the axistools-maven-plugin. ELIMINATED.

This leaves us with the JAX-WS RI and the Apache CXF stacks, and their respective Maven plugins: the JAX-WS Maven Plugin (instructions to use the JAX-WS Maven Plugin can be found on the Usage page) and the cxf-codegen-plugin.

Regarding the pros and cons, I would summarize them like this:

• JAX-WS RI is included in Java 6, but the documentation is more "rough" (although you'll find plenty of tutorials about JAX-WS RI too).
• Apache CXF is better documentated and provide more flexibility if you want to go beyond the spec.

At the end, both choices are decent so I suggest to browse the links a bit and to make your own opinion.