My fellow Monks,

After a few tries I'm able to communicate correctly with a webservice here at work. The following code works:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Readonly;
use SOAP::Lite +trace => "debug";
use Data::Dumper;

Readonly my $SOAPURL => 'http://the.webservice/service/pers?wsdl';

my $service = SOAP::Lite->service($SOAPURL);

my $payload = SOAP::Data->name( 'persKeyParam' => '123456' );

my $info = $service->getEmpInfo( '', $payload );

print Data::Dumper->new( [$info], [qw/$info/] )->Indent(1)->Dump;
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How come I have to use the following:

my $info = $service->getEmpInfo( '', $payload );
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The examples found in the documentation always speak of:

my $info = $service->getEmpInfo( $payload );
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The code just above returns a $info = undef;

I found out about the '' by accident :)

The http://the.webservice/service/pers?wsdl returns:

   <xs:complexType name='getEmpInfo'>
    <xs:sequence>
     <xs:element minOccurs='0' name='persKeyParam' type='xs:string'/>
    </xs:sequence>
   </xs:complexType>
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and

  <operation name='getEmpInfo'>
   <soap:operation soapAction=''/>
   <input>
    <soap:body use='literal'/>
   </input>
   <output>
    <soap:body use='literal'/>
   </output>
  </operation>
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Calling $service->getEmpInfo( $payload ); with debug on gives:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope soap:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/enc
+oding/" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:
+soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http:/
+/www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:tns="http://webservice.my.
+work/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<soap:Body>
<tns:getEmpInfo>
<getEmpInfo xsi:nil="true" xsi:type="tns:getEmpInfo" />
</tns:getEmpInfo>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
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Calling $service->getEmpInfo( '', $payload ); with debug on gives:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope soap:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/enc
+oding/" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:
+soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http:/
+/www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:tns="http://webservice.my.
+work/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<soap:Body>
<tns:getEmpInfo>
<getEmpInfo xsi:nil="true" xsi:type="tns:getEmpInfo" />
<persKeyParam xsi:type="xsd:int">
123456
</persKeyParam>
</tns:getEmpInfo>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
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The SOAP::Lite I'm using is 0.710.10

The extra '' parameter seems wrong. Why do I need to shift my persKeyParam up one index? What's going on?
For as long as $payload comes as a second parameter the call works. No matter what I put as a first param it works. I can put '' as an empty string, or a 0 or any other number.

Why does it work? If anyone could enlighten me I'd be grateful.


Greetings!