The SOAP saga continues

Part II of the “Why am I still coding”

You remember the article I wrote a while back? If not, go take a look before starting to read this one. The link to my previous masterpiece is here: “Why am I still coding?”

It was a fierce battle with crappy Polish SOAP back then. I managed to put up with the fight for a month or so, hiding behind smaller tasks until I finally had to face the mighty Wizzdle (WSDL) army of Envelope warriors. Me and my tiny brain were almost crushed by overwhelming amount of Foam, but I managed to pull my last trick by confusing the Bubble king and escaping the battlefield entirely.

I then wandered about in the middle lands and looked into some villages which offered jobs who had managed to hide from the fearsome army of SOAP, which has become the dominating power of many, once great, coding kingdoms.

I finally managed to find one. It looked too good to be true. I thought, I will be secret, I will be safe. And I was. I was given a small project to rule. I could make my own decisions and do everything I thought was best.

A peaceful month passed, but then, a strange dark wanderer came behind the gates of my newly found home. With no second thoughts, I let him in and allowed him to introduce himself. Once the door closed behind him, he opened an Envelope and took out a clever piece of riddle which seemed actually easy, once I first glanced at it. Without further ado, I signed the contract and promised to solve the riddle. The stranger disappeared immediately without saying another word.

Couple of hours later, when I was deep into the documentation which the wanderer left behind, I noticed something peculiar. The papers were getting slippery. Next events happened so quickly I didn’t even have time to pull out my sword. Papers were now getting bigger like soap, being microwaved. Once fully emerged, it was the mighty SOAP king himself.

Thousands of lines of XSD glowing red on his thick armor which looked suspiciously like an Envelope. A huge shield with namespaces engraved onto it and an enormous sword in his other hand, also engraved, but this time with a number - 1998. On his belt, there was a rather large skull hanging, which I recognized to be CORBA’s head. And then there was a vast WSDL cannon mounted on his chest, acting as a front-end.

He was standing in front of me, in full glory. I stumbled backwards and somehow managed to pull out my own puny sword, and it was a miracle I found my shield too.

Bubble king charged his cannon, I ducked under my shield and prayed to the gods of coding. And then he blasted. At least hundred thousand characters of XML flew directly at me, melting my shield entirely and burning some namespaces deep into my skin. The SOAP king laughed he’s evil laughter and I got my moment to counterattack!

I threw my sword dead center into his WSDL front-end, some XML spilled out and I gathered it quickly, injecting it into SOAP UI tool to generate some readable documentation. My hopes were getting higher, because the king was weakened and my graphical documentation almost ready. But out came only the top-level documentation and no type definitions!

This felt definitely like a death blow to me so I decided to grab the spilled XML defining the WSDL interface, the miserable documentation and the riddle itself. And oh, also my sword. The ruler of the Envelopes was still confused so I made an effort to make a run for it. I jumped out of the window, ran as fast as I could, out of the village and many miles into the forest.

There, I found a cave. I’ve been living in this cave for days now, hiding from the angry Envelope soldiers, who I saw in great numbers, when I was on my way into this cave.

Every day I am digging further and further into the riddle and manually decrypting the WSDL. Gathering counterintelligence of the enemy and piece by piece putting together my Ruby Class, built on top of Savon, which one day, I hope, will be worthy opponent to the immense power of the deadly SOAP king and his army.