Adding Content to the Header

To add content to the header, you create a SOAPHeaderElement object. As with all new elements, it must have an associated QName object.

For example, suppose you want to add a conformance claim header to the message to state that your message conforms to the WS-I Basic Profile. The following code fragment retrieves the SOAPHeader object from message and adds a new SOAPHeaderElement object to it. This SOAPHeaderElement object contains the correct qualified name and attribute for a WS-I conformance claim header.

SOAPHeader header = message.getSOAPHeader();
QName headerName = new QName("http://ws-i.org/schemas/conformanceClaim/",
    "Claim", "wsi");
SOAPHeaderElement headerElement =
    header.addHeaderElement(headerName);
headerElement.addAttribute(new QName("conformsTo"),
    "http://ws-i.org/profiles/basic/1.1/");

At this point, header contains the SOAPHeaderElement object headerElement identified by the QName object headerName. Note that the addHeaderElement method both creates headerElement and adds it to header.

A conformance claim header has no content. This code produces the following XML header:

<SOAP-ENV:Header>
  <wsi:Claim
    xmlns:wsi="http://ws-i.org/schemas/conformanceClaim/"
    conformsTo="http://ws-i.org/profiles/basic/1.1/"/>
</SOAP-ENV:Header>

For more information about creating SOAP messages that conform to WS-I, see the Conformance Claim Attachment Mechanisms document described in the Conformance section of the WS-I Basic Profile.

For a different kind of header, you might want to add content to headerElement. The following line of code uses the method addTextNode to do this.

headerElement.addTextNode("order");

Now you have the SOAPHeader object header that contains a SOAPHeaderElement object whose content is "order".