How to unmarshall SOAP XML to Java Object

Question

while trying to unmarshall my soap XML to JAXB object am getting the following error.

We are getting error that expected element is none. Should anything specific be done while unmarshalling the SOAP XML.

javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext jaxbContext = (javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext) JAXBContext.newInstance(Class.forName(requestName));
Unmarshaller unmarshaller = jaxbContext.createUnmarshaller();
StringReader reader = new StringReader(SoapXmlString);          
reqInfo = unmarshaller.unmarshal(reader);

Am getting the following error :

 javax.xml.bind.UnmarshalException: unexpected element (uri:"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/", local:"Envelope"). Expected elements are (none)
    at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallingContext.handleEvent(UnmarshallingContext.java:642)
    at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.Loader.reportError(Loader.java:254)
    at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.Loader.reportError(Loader.java:249)
    at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.Loader.reportUnexpectedChildElement(Loader.java:116)
    at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallingContext$DefaultRootLoader.childElement

and here is the sample XML

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:v2="http://example.com/v2">
       <soapenv:Header/>
       <soapenv:Body>
          <v2:createSession>
             <v2:client>
                <!--Optional:-->
                <v2:name>?</v2:name>
                <!--Optional:-->
                <v2:clientId>?</v2:clientId>
                <!--Optional:-->
                <v2:requestId>?</v2:requestId>
             </v2:client>
             <!--Optional:-->
             <v2:oldSessionId>?</v2:oldSessionId>
             <!--Optional:-->
             <v2:clientIp>?</v2:clientIp>
             <!--Optional:-->
             <v2:clientIpStatus>?</v2:clientIpStatus>
             <!--Optional:-->
             <v2:superBYOBFlow>?</v2:superBYOBFlow>
             <!--Optional:-->
             <v2:FlowParams>?</v2:FlowParams>
             <!--Optional:-->
             <v2:deviceInfo>?</v2:deviceInfo>
          </v2:createSession>
       </soapenv:Body>
    </soapenv:Envelope>

Please do help .

Solution

I don't think you're taking the SOAP envelope into account... Your generated JAXB Unmarshaller won't know anything about the Body or Envelope tags, it will be expecting your createSession to be the root element hence the "unexpected element" error.

You need to extract the content from the Envelope first, you can do this with message.getSOAPBody().extractContentAsDocument() if you create a SOAPMessage object from your content first.

It's quite fiddly to do, here's a working example from my blog

String example =
        "<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\"><soapenv:Header /><soapenv:Body><ns2:farm xmlns:ns2=\"http://adamish.com/example/farm\"><horse height=\"123\" name=\"glue factory\"/></ns2:farm></soapenv:Body></soapenv:Envelope>";
SOAPMessage message = MessageFactory.newInstance().createMessage(null,
        new ByteArrayInputStream(example.getBytes()));
Unmarshaller unmarshaller = JAXBContext.newInstance(Farm.class).createUnmarshaller();
Farm farm = (Farm)unmarshaller.unmarshal(message.getSOAPBody().extractContentAsDocument());

It seems that if you don't declare your namespace in your schema .xsd file then you'll see the error you have.

I created a dummy schema with a root element createSession and by adding the targetNamespace attribute and regenerating the JAXB classes the error disappeared

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xs:schema
     xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
     targetNamespace="http://example.com/v2"> <!-- targetNamespace essential for JAXB to work-->
    <xs:element name="createSession">  
        <xs:complexType>
            <xs:attribute name="foo" type="xs:string" use="required" />
        </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

Comments

[Priyesh]

What value does 'requestName' have?

[Paul Samsotha]

See here.

[srinath]

@priyesh : its a class name . Ex: createSessionRequest

[DarthPablo]

I'm probably going blind (likely), but I can't see the link to the duplicate answer?!?

[srinath]

Thanks for your help .. i tried the same code by replacing the Farm class by CreateSessionRequest class . But am getting following error again . javax.xml.bind.UnmarshalException: unexpected element (uri:"example.com/v2", local:"createSession"). Expected elements are (none)

[Adam]

@srinath Can you post your .xsd file and I'll have a closer look.