Harsh? Maybe, but I couldn’t say the word ‘Bastards’ without feeling Dial on my cleansed taste buds. Maybe I should take legal action against the cinematic classic ‘Hot Shots.’

What are we here for? Not liquid soap, perhaps some profanity. But really, you want to use the SOAP web services protocol with your Yahoo User Interface application, in particular the Connection Manager component. This tutorial assumes you are at least familiar with the examples provided on the Yahoo! UI Library: Connection Manager website.

How is SOAP different than any other AJAX call using the Connection Manager? Well, normally, when you perform an HTTP Post AJAX call, it is passing in a key-value pair string encoded with the normal key=value&key2=value format. But when doing a SOAP call, we want to post an XML SOAP Envelope to the server instead of this key-value pair string. In case you’re reading this article and don’t know what a SOAP Envelope looks like, I’ll post a sample here:

<s11:Envelope xmlns:s11="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<s11:Header>
</s11:Header>
<s11:Body>
</s11:Body>
</s11:Envelope>


Of course, it is beyond the scope of this article to argue whether a REST or a SOAP format for your Service Oriented Architecture is a better choice. You’re stuck with SOAP, otherwise you wouldn’t have read this far.

So, let’s post our SOAP Envelope using the YUI Connection Manager with the code provided below:

var targetUrl = 'http://www.zachleat.com/postToServer.php'; // this is not a real URL
 
var callback = {
	success: function(o)
	{
		var root = o.responseXML.documentElement; 
		if( root.getElementsByTagName( 'faultstring' ).length > 0 ) // faultstring is a standard SOAP error message format
		{
			var faultstring = root.getElementsByTagName( 'faultstring' )[0].firstChild.nodeValue;
			var detailed = '';
			YAHOO.UP.util.each( root.getElementsByTagName( 'detail' )[0].childNodes, function( j, textNode )
			{
				if( textNode.nodeValue != null ) detailed += textNode.nodeValue;
			} );
			// do something with your error message stored in the faultstring variable, with a more detailed message in the detailed variable
		} else {
			// this is an actual success.
		}
	}, 
	failure: function( o )
	{
		// do something with your failure.
	}
};
 
var message = '<s11:Envelope...YOUR SOAP MESSAGE HERE';
 
// we need to set our own header.
YAHOO.util.Connect._use_default_post_header = false;
YAHOO.util.Connect.initHeader( 'Content-Type', 'text/xml', false );
var ajaxCall = YAHOO.util.Connect.asyncRequest( 'POST', targetUrl, callback, message);

I hope this code helps some of you bastards.

Are you programming a for loop? How do you know that the client will increment your integers through the loop correctly? That’s why you need to call our Incrementer Web Service to increment your loop counter.

Sample Service Calls:
Increment 0: http://www.zachleat.com/Projects/SOA/index.php/incrementer/0
Increment 3920: http://www.zachleat.com/Projects/SOA/index.php/incrementer/3920
Increment 98: http://www.zachleat.com/Projects/SOA/index.php/incrementer/98

Are you programming an array that needs to be magically combined into a string? Do you think you can reliably count on Internet Explorer to perform the function in the same way as your Firefox’s, or your Opera’s, or even your (God Forbid) Safari’s??? No, dare I say it, no.

But don’t fear. We are here to comfort your pain, with a shot in the arm of standarditity. Welcome the String Concatenation Web Service.

Sample Service Call:
Concatenate string1 with string2 with string3: http://www.zachleat.com/Projects/SOA/index.php/concat/string1/string2/string3/

And finally, are you feeling lost in this sea of amorphous web technologies mixing and mashing together to form the gelatinous blob of money and media whores we know as Web 2.0? Don’t worry, OMG SOA is here for you again to solve all of your identity crisis problems. Ask our Are you Web 2.0 Web Service with your URL and the magic 8 ball service will answer your question.

Sample Service Call:
Is www.zachleat.com Web 2.0? http://www.zachleat.com/Projects/SOA/index.php/am-i-web-2.0/www.zachleat.com/

Update: apparently there is already a company called the Object Management Group with a website about SOA. Whoops?