SOAP 1.1 body Element (Using the HTTP Binding Component)

Using the HTTP Binding Component

SOAP 1.1 `body` Element

The SOAP 1.1 body element provides binding information from the abstract operation to the concrete SOAP operation.

Table 4 SOAP 1.1 body Element Attributes


Property	Description	Required or Optional	Example
parts	Indicates the parts from the WSDL message that will be included in the body element	Optional	part1
use	Indicates how message parts are encoded in the SOAP body	Optional	literal
encodingStyle	Indicates a particular encoding style to use	Optional	http://someEncodingStyle
namespace	Indicates the namespace of the wrapper element for RPC style messages	Optional	urn:someNamespace

The following example illustrates the SOAP 1.1 body element.

<definitions .... >
    <binding .... >
        <operation .... >
           <input>
               <soap:body parts="nmtokens"? use="literal|encoded"?
                          encodingStyle="uri-list"? namespace="uri"?>
           </input>
           <output>
               <soap:body parts="nmtokens"? use="literal|encoded"?
                          encodingStyle="uri-list"? namespace="uri"?>
           </output>
        </operation>
    </binding>
</definitions>

The optional parts attribute of type nmtokens indicates which parts appear somewhere within the SOAP body portion of the message. Other parts of a message may appear in other portions of the message, such as when SOAP is used in conjunction with the multipart/related MIME binding. If the parts attribute is omitted, then all parts defined by the message are assumed to be included in the SOAP Body portion.

The use attribute indicates whether the message parts are encoded using some encoding rules, or whether the parts define the concrete schema of the message.

If use is encoded, then each message part references an abstract type using the type attribute. These abstract types are used to produce a concrete message by applying an encoding that is specified by the encodingStyle attribute. The part names, types and value of the namespace attribute are all inputs to the encoding, although the namespace attribute only applies to content that is not explicitly defined by the abstract types. If the referenced encoding style allows variations in its format, as does the SOAP encoding, then all variations must be supported ("reader makes right").

If use is literal, then each part references a concrete schema definition using either the element or type attribute. In the first case, the element referenced by the part will appear directly under the body element for document style bindings, or under an accessor element named after the message part in RPC style. In the second case, the type referenced by the part becomes the schema type of the enclosing element: body for document style or part accessor element for RPC style.

You can use the value of the encodingStyle attribute when the use is literal to indicate that the concrete format was derived using a particular encoding such as the SOAP encoding, but that only the specified variation is supported ("writer makes right").

The value of the encodingStyle attribute is a list of URIs, each separated by a single space. The URIs represent encodings used within the message, in order of most restrictive to least restrictive, like the encodingStyle attribute defined in the SOAP specification.