Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello everybody, I'va a cgi soap web server and I've a problem for returning special chars.

With this script, there is no problem :

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser';

my $soap_transport = SOAP::Transport::HTTP::CGI->dispatch_to('my_serve
+r');
$soap_transport->serializer->encoding('UTF-8');
$soap_transport->handle();

=begin WSDL
        _RETURN $string
        _DOC fonction de test du web service
=cut
sub test {
    my $response = "xxx";
    
    return $response;
}

[download]

response is :

<soap:Envelope soap:encodingStyle="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-enco
+ding" xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:soap
+enc="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-encoding" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w
+3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-ins
+tance">
   <soap:Body>
      <testResponse xmlns="https://my_server_url">
         <s-gensym3 xsi:type="xsd:string">xxx</s-gensym3>
      </testResponse>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

[download]

but when I try to return special chars :

=begin WSDL
        _RETURN $string
        _DOC fonction de test du web service
=cut
sub test {
    my $response = "ייי";
    
    return $response;
}

[download]

response is :

<soap:Envelope soap:encodingStyle="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-enco
+ding" xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:soap
+enc="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-encoding" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w
+3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-ins
+tance">
   <soap:Body>
      <testResponse xmlns="https://my_server_url">
         <s-gensym3 xsi:type="xsd:base64Binary">w6nDqcOp</s-gensym3>
      </testResponse>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

[download]

We can see that the string type is now base64Binary

If I try to encode string in utf8, the problem persists :

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser';
use utf8;

my $soap_transport = SOAP::Transport::HTTP::CGI->dispatch_to('saint_kr
+o');
$soap_transport->serializer->encoding('UTF-8');
$soap_transport->handle();

=begin WSDL
        _RETURN $string
        _DOC fonction de test du web service
=cut
sub test {
    my $response = "ייי";

    utf8::encode($response);
    
    return $response;
}

[download]

response is still :

<soap:Envelope soap:encodingStyle="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-enco
+ding" xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:soap
+enc="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-encoding" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w
+3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-ins
+tance">
   <soap:Body>
      <testResponse xmlns="https://my_server_url">
         <s-gensym3 xsi:type="xsd:base64Binary">w6nDqcOp</s-gensym3>
      </testResponse>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

[download]

Can someone tell me what is the solution for encode response to keep string type and prevent base64 conversion ?

Thanks

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Encoding problem on SOAP web server
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 12, 2016 at 14:44 UTC

    I've found something that works. Not perfect but it works :

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser';
use utf8;

*SOAP::Serializer::as_base64Binary = \&SOAP::XMLSchema2001::Serializer
+::as_string;

my $soap_transport = SOAP::Transport::HTTP::CGI->dispatch_to('my_serve
+r');
$soap_transport->serializer->encoding('UTF-8');
$soap_transport->handle();

=begin WSDL
        _RETURN $string
        _DOC fonction de test du web service
=cut
sub test {
    my $response = "ייי";
    
    return $response;
}

    [download]

    Response is :

    <soap:Envelope soap:encodingStyle="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-enco
+ding" xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:soap
+enc="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-encoding" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w
+3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-ins
+tance">
   <soap:Body>
      <testResponse xmlns="https://my_server_url">
         <s-gensym3 xsi:type="xsd:string">ייי</s-gensym3>
      </testResponse>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

    [download]

    But if someone has better to offer me I am interested !

    Thanks

[reply]
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Re: Encoding problem on SOAP web server
by hotchiwawa (Scribe) on Jan 12, 2016 at 11:07 UTC
    Hello :)

    This is not the solution at your problem but your test is wrong, you said:
    sub test {
    my $response = "ייי";

    utf8::encode($response);
    
    return $response;
}

    [download]
    should be: 
    $response = utf8::encode($response);

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      I think you are wrong.

      utf8::encode($string) modifies in-place passed var and return nothing.

      http://perldoc.perl.org/utf8.html :

      utf8::encode($string) Converts in-place the character sequence to the corresponding octet sequence in UTF-X. That is, every (possibly wide) character gets replaced with a sequence of one or more characters that represent the individual UTF-X bytes of the character. The UTF8 flag is turned off. Returns nothing.

[reply]
        Yep right, strange (if we compare with other convertion functions) but if we go deeper, the input parameter should be a reference and here $response is a value ("ייי"), or maybe I don't understand something! Can you explain that?!

        Edit (explanation)
        Thanks to choroba.
        Found in perlsub: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlsub.html

        if you called a function with two arguments, those would be stored in $_[0] and $_1 . The array @_ is a local array, but its elements are aliases for the actual scalar parameters. In particular, if an element $_[0] is updated, the corresponding argument is updated (or an error occurs if it is not updatable).
[reply]
Re: Encoding problem on SOAP web server
by 1nickt (Canon) on Jan 12, 2016 at 14:39 UTC
    Edit: never mind, noticed the use utf8; in the lower example.

    In the code you've shown, you don't tell Perl that the source contains characters already in UTF-8. I don't know if that's the cause of your problem with the SOAP serializer's encoding, but it could be. You should always give Perl a clue and point out that your source code is (partially) UTF-8 "high" characters, when you use them in the source code, with: 

    use utf8;

    [download]
    From the docs for utf8:

    The use utf8 pragma tells the Perl parser to allow UTF-8 in the program text in the current lexical scope ...

    Because it is not possible to reliably tell UTF-8 from native 8 bit encodings, you need either a Byte Order Mark at the beginning of your source code, or use utf8; , to instruct perl.


    The way forward always starts with a minimal test.
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[d/l]
[select]
      Yep thanks
[reply]

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