# ActionWebService and WSDL

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/actionwebservice-and-wsdl/50817>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [December 21, 2005, 1:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/actionwebservice-and-wsdl/50817 "2005-12-21T13:11:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ptremblett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/dc4da7/32.png) [@ptremblett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ptremblett)\
**Post date:** [December 21, 2005, 1:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/actionwebservice-and-wsdl/50817/1 "2005-12-21T13:11:26Z")

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The suggested approach for developing a web service using  
ActionWebService appears to be start by defining the API you want and  
then you can generate WSDL. I want to start from WSDL. I’ve tried  
wsdl2ruby but the Ruby code it generates does not appear to play well  
with Rails. Is there a way I can get what I want? I’m new at this so if  
the answer is a forehead slapper, I’ll be happy.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ptremblett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/dc4da7/32.png) [@ptremblett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ptremblett)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2006, 9:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/actionwebservice-and-wsdl/50817/2 "2006-04-11T21:12:06Z")

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Paul Tremblett wrote:

> The suggested approach for developing a web service using  
> ActionWebService appears to be start by defining the API you want and  
> then you can generate WSDL. I want to start from WSDL. I’ve tried  
> wsdl2ruby but the Ruby code it generates does not appear to play well  
> with Rails. Is there a way I can get what I want? I’m new at this so if  
> the answer is a forehead slapper, I’ll be happy.

ActionWebService is primarily for hosting/serving up web services  
(servers)…it sounds like you are more interested in building a client  
for some one else’s web service (using a provided WSDL file)…for that  
I would suggest you try SOAP4R … here’s some quick steps:

1. make sure to update your configuration to include the wsdl driver  
(you can simply put this in your config/environment.rb file):

require ‘soap/wsdlDriver’

1. Create a controller with an action that actually talks to the  
webservice (this code conects to Google using their WSDL file) -  
(app/controllers/code\_controller.rb):

class CodeController \< ApplicationController  
def googletest  
yourkey = ‘YOUR GOOGLE DEVELOPER KEY’ # Your Google dev  
key  
@yourquery = ‘YOUR SEARCH TEXT’ # Search value  
XSD::Charset.encoding = ‘UTF8’ # Set encoding  
wsdlfile = “[http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl](http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl)” # WSDL  
location

```
# Create driver and set up methods
driver = SOAP::WSDLDriverFactory.new(wsdlfile).create_rpc_driver

# make our SOAP request
@result = driver.doGoogleSearch(yourkey, @yourquery, 0, 3, false, 

```

‘’, false, ‘’, ‘’, ‘’)  
end  
end

1. Create your related view to display your results  
(app/views/code/googletest.rhtml):

Query for: \<%= @yourquery %\>  
  
Found: \<%= @result.estimatedTotalResultsCount %\>  
  
Query took about \<%= @result.searchTime %\> seconds  
  
\<% @result.resultElements.each do |rec| %\>  
**Title:** \<%= rec[“title”] %\>  
  
**Summary:** \<%= rec.snippet %\>  
  
**Link:** \<a href=“\<%= rec[“URL”] %\>”\>\<%= rec[“URL”] %\>  
  
  
  
\<% end %\>

That should be it! Hopefully that helps you out…oh and just for a  
shameless plug, this all came directly from a PDF document I’m putting  
together for O’Reilly that will cover Web Services with Ruby on  
Rails…it breaks this example down in more detail as to why we do what  
we do (and also shows you how to build clients for REST, XML-RPC, and  
SOAP without WSDL…plus I cover ActionWebService and how to use it to  
serve/host REST, XML-RPC, and SOAP services)…should be out in a few  
weeks for everyone to check out!

p.s. if you need/want more specifics on any of the above steps please  
feel free to email me directly at removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid