SOAP or XML-RPC

Rails
1

I need to use a third party web service and have a choice between a SOAP
or XML-RPC interface. I have never used either and was wondering what
people recommend in general and which is best supported/friendly with
Rails.

Thanks,
Bob

2

Stay as far away from SOAP as you can possibly get. This post explains
why:
http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the-s-stands-for-simple/

XML-RPC will work, though depending on how the webservice is supposed to
work (are you dealing with data or are you telling the server to start
some
sort of processing?), REST may be your best bet. REST is now natively
supported in Rails as of 1.2.3, and while I don’t know about hooking up
XML-RPC, I’m sure there’s a plugin or two around to do this.

Jason

3

For the record, I did not mention anything about soap4r, I’m talking
about
SOAP in general. No matter what language you’re using, I highly
recommend
you stay away from SOAP. Read the article I posted, even the developers
of
SOAP have deprecated the original acronym. The system is bloated,
confusing,
and even worse, NOT a standard.

If you’re choice is XML-RPC or SOAP, then go XML-RPC.

Jason

4

On 4/18/07, Jason R. [email protected] wrote:

Stay as far away from SOAP as you can possibly get. This post explains why:
http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the-s-stands-for-simple/

A lot of people criticise Ruby’s soap4r implementation, but I wonder
whether
the perceived problem with soap4r is simply due to the fact that it is a
different WS-stack to the one being communicated with (a complete no-no
in WS-* land).

soap4r is an implementation of a developers interpretation of an
incomplete
specification. Like all WS-* stacks.

The accepted wisdom in WS-* implementations, is that if you are required
to use a web service from a specific site or vendor, you use the same
stack.

XML-RPC will work, though depending on how the webservice is supposed to
work (are you dealing with data or are you telling the server to start some
sort of processing?), REST may be your best bet. REST is now natively
supported in Rails as of 1.2.3, and while I don’t know about hooking up
XML-RPC, I’m sure there’s a plugin or two around to do this.

Well the OP stated that his 2 choices were XML-RPC or SOAP. There wasn’t
a REST option (which is far superior), of the 2, pick XML-RPC, Ruby is
meant
to have a really good implementation actually.

5

Guest wrote:

I need to use a third party web service and have a choice between a SOAP
or XML-RPC interface. I have never used either and was wondering what
people recommend in general and which is best supported/friendly with
Rails.

Thanks,
Bob

I second XML-RPC. The SOAP implementation in ruby has almost no
documentation and the even the code is difficult to read. XML-RPC at
least has some documentation, and I’m working on more.

jfmiller