Using the Mozilla SOAP APISaturday August 31st, 2002Apple Developer Connection has an introduction to Mozilla's SOAP API. The tutorial explains how to use JavaScript to make SOAP calls to the Google Web API. It's particularly cool as Mozilla is currently the only Web browser that supports SOAP natively. If you're not exactly sure what SOAP is, take look at this introduction from About or something a little more technical. Too bad it cannot be run from pages served using HTTP. It does not even work within the same domain. The SOAP component only works when using chrome urls :'( Really? The ADC article says it works when using signed scripts. But it should be possible to connect to servers from the same domain without any security prompt. Just the way it works with cross frame scripting. Yep, signing scripts sucks and it make only VeriSign richer. SOAP, XMLHttpRequest (and others?) should really work with the originating server. Perhaps introducing a security checkbox to limit network acces to GET operations. AFAIK there is a host based db in the prefs where you can allow a specific host to use (after a manual permission) eg XPConnect. Currently this is meant to be for developers without any UI. Masi This functionality can easily be used outside of chrome, and does not need to be in a signed or locally-saved script. The article was wrong on that count. 1. It should work to services in the same domain as the caller. If anyone can document that this does not work, it should be logged as a bug and fixed. 2. You can arrange with the server to ignore a source verification header and then it requires no special privs to call the service -- the verification is to prevent calls to behind-the-firewall SOAP services by untrusted applets, which is why restrictions exist in the first place. 3. You can adjust your security prefs fo permit the calls to occur (I don't recommend this generally, but for specific cases, it may be appropriate). I have done a number of demos of this functionality, and none were in chrome. http://segment7.net/mozilla/GoogleAPI/GoogleAPI.html Does anybody know cross-browser implementation of SOAP (i.e. a wrapper around the different ways of doing SOAP in the two browsers) that works in both Mozilla and IE? In my opinion, the key to making a cross-browser way of invoking SOAP is to make it as simple as possible. The current Mozilla API described in recent articles is alow-level API (although not nearly as low-level as what Microsoft designates as a low-level API. Therefore, it is not optimally simple to create the proxy effect. A higher-level API is being developed on top which uses the low level to build a proxy on top. This means that calling it is much simpler, something like: var p = new // Create the proxy var p = WSPProxy("http://www.xmethods.net/sd/2001/BabelFishService.wsdl", "BabelFishPort",...); // Make the call var result = p.BabelFish("en_de", value); Once it gets this simple, it is time to start talking about a common wrapper, IMO. I think the MS toolkit for SOAP that can be installed in a browser will support similar WSDL techniques. Ray Whitmer So would this allow someone to develop something like the Google Toolbar that would work in all Mozilla based clients? Dan Think its the same one! http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/synd/2002/08/30/mozillasoapapi.html |