WSDL2Code UI tool - Easy and efficient code generation utility

If you are an Apache axis2 user, you may already familiar with WSDL2Java code generation tool. WSO2 WSAS is powered by Apache Axis2 and includes a rich set of features to interact with web services. WSDL2Code is a UI based tool integrated with WSO2 WSAS which allows users to generate code from a WSDL hosted in a remote server or a local file system.
Lets see how WSDL2Code tool makes web service developement effort much easier and productive.

Step 1
Download and Install WSO2 WSAS

Step 2
Start wso2wsas. Go to WSAS_HOME/bin and run wso2wsas.bat{sh}

Step 3
Go to http://localhost:9762
Welcome page of the WSAS console will be displayed. Click on WSDL2Code at the left navigation menu. You will be directed to the following screen.



You can see multiple code generation options in the above screen. These code gen options are similar to the command line options available in WSDL2java tool.

Step 4
Lets generate client stub against default version service using the above tool.
Enter 'http://localhost:9762/services/version?wsdl' in the -uri option available on the top of the page.
Select -uw option and click on 'Generate'
It will prompt to save the generated zip file (e.g:- 1.2151049949841125E12.zip). Save it in a directory in your local file system.

Step 5
Unzip the generated file (You will see src folder, build.xml and pom.xml in the extracted directory) and go to the directory where you extracted the zip file.
Assuming your IDE is eclipse, enter the following command to export the generated code in to eclipse and setting up WSAS libraries at once.

mvn eclipse:eclipse

(If you have not installed maven2, download it from here and add maven_home/bin to your PATH)

You will see 'BUILD SUCCESSFUL' message at the end of executing above command.

Step 6
Open eclipse and go to Window-->Preferences-->Java-->Build path-->Classpath variables
Create a new variable, M2_REPO and enter your maven2 repository path as the value. (maven2 repository is located at user home directory. e.g:- C:/Documents and Settings/Charitha/.m2/repository)
(Note that this step has to be done only once. If the M2_REPO variable is already defined, you can ignore this step)

Step 7
In eclipse, select File-->import-->Existing projects into workspace-->next
Browse root directory of the extracted zip file above. Click 'Finish'.
New project will be added to the workspace with an id like N10001-version. You should see that all the necessary WSAS libraries are added to the project.

Now the only remaining step is to write client to invoke version service as follows

public class VersionClient {

public static void main(String[] args)throws Exception {
VersionStub stub = new VersionStub();
System.out.println(stub.getVersion());
}

}

You may realize how WSO2 WSAS reduce the complexity of web service invocation with these kind of tools. Even if you are beginner to the world of SOA, WSO2 WSAS can be considered as the best paltform to get started with minimum effort.