Creating Axis1 Simple Web Service and a Client Using Eclipse IDE

Creating a web service or a web service client using Eclipse IDE is really simple and doesn't take more than several minutes. Following is a quick and easy guide for that. I am using Eclipse Indigo for this.

1. Create a new Dynamic Web Project.

2. Select Apache Tomcat as the target runtime.

3. Right click on src folder, create a new java class and name it as 'Clock'.

4. Add getDate() method to the 'Clock' class as below. The method should be public.

5. Now we are going to create the web service based on this class. Right click on the 'Clock' class, then select -> Web Services -> Create Web Service

6. You will see the following screen. Click 'Next' to see what methods are going to be in Web Service or simply click 'Finish'.

7. If you clicked 'Next', you will see a page like below where you can select methods to be visible in Web Service. Click 'Finish'.

8. This will create Clock.wsdl, web.xml and some other important files. See below image.

9. And your application is now automatically deployed in Tomcat server.
To check this, in your web browser go to http://localhost:8080/TimeService/services/Clock
You will see a page like this.

Congratulations!! You have successfully published the web service.

Now we are going to create a client which consumes this web service.
(Note that the client should not necessarily be a web application.)

10. Create a new Java Project. Name it as 'TimeClient'.

11. We need the WSDL file to create the Web Service Client. So copy the WSDL file from your TimeServer project to TimeClient project.

12. Now right click on this WSDL file -> Web Services -> Generate Client

You will get following screen.

Click 'Finish'.
13. Now right click on the src folder and create a new class. This is the class to which you are going to add your methods which calls the Web Service.
Name the class as 'ClockClient'.

14. Add a main method to 'ClockClient' class as below and run it.

15. You will get an output printed on your console as below.

Your client has successfully consumed the web service you created...