Apache CXF - Creating a POJO Client & Test

Our next task is to create a client that will consume the web service that you have created.

Creating Client

In the server application we've created in Apache CXF - Create Server chapter, HelloWorld is the interface that exposes our web service. The web service itself just provides a plain greeting message to the client. Usually, the web service interface is exposed to the outside world using WSDL (Web Services Description Language). In this trivial application, we will expose our web service to the client by exposing directly the service interface and that is the HelloWorld.class.

For this purpose, CXF provides a factory class called ClientProxyFactoryBean that allows us to attach to the desired interface to the created factory instance.

First, we create a factory bean instance as follows −

ClientProxyFactoryBean factory = new ClientProxyFactoryBean();

We call the setAddress method on the factory bean instance to set the URL by which our web service can be invoked. In our case, we will use the URL used while creating the server in our earlier step −

factory.setAddress("http://localhost:5000/Hello");

Next, we call the create method on the factory instance to attach our service interface HelloWorld.class to it.

HelloWorld helloServer = factory.create(HelloWorld.class);

Finally, we call the greetings method to invoke the remote web service.

System.out.println(helloServer.greetings(System.getProperty("user.name")));

This would print a greetings message on your console.

The entire source for the client application is shown below −

package com.tutorialspoint.cxf.pojo;

import org.apache.cxf.frontend.ClientProxyFactoryBean;

public class HelloClient {
   public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
      ClientProxyFactoryBean factory = new ClientProxyFactoryBean();
      factory.setAddress("http://localhost:5000/Hello");
      HelloWorld helloServer = factory.create(HelloWorld.class);
      System.out.println(helloServer.greetings(System.getProperty("user.name")));
   }
}

Update pom.xml to include client profile

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns = "http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" 
xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
xsi:schemaLocation = "http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 
http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
   <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
   <groupId>com.tutorialspoint</groupId>
   <artifactId>cxf-pojo</artifactId>
   <version>1.0</version>
   <packaging>jar</packaging>
   <properties>
      <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
      <maven.compiler.source>24</maven.compiler.source>
      <maven.compiler.target>24</maven.compiler.target>
 	  <cxf.rt.version>4.1.3</cxf.rt.version>
   </properties>
   <profiles>
      <profile>
         <id>server</id>
         <build>
            <defaultGoal>test</defaultGoal>
            <plugins>
               <plugin>
                  <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                  <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                  <executions>
                     <execution>
                        <phase>test</phase>
                        <goals>
                           <goal>java</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                           <mainClass>
                              com.tutorialspoint.cxf.pojo.HelloServer
                           </mainClass>
                        </configuration>
                     </execution>
                  </executions>
               </plugin>
            </plugins>
         </build>
      </profile>
      <profile>
         <id>client</id>
         <build>
            <defaultGoal>test</defaultGoal>
            <plugins>
               <plugin>
                  <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                  <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                  <executions>
                     <execution>
                        <phase>test</phase>
                        <goals>
                           <goal>java</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                           <mainClass>
                           com.tutorialspoint.cxf.pojo.HelloClient
                           </mainClass>
                        </configuration>
                     </execution>
                  </executions>
               </plugin>
            </plugins>
         </build>
      </profile>
   </profiles>
   <dependencies>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
         <artifactId>cxf-rt-features-logging</artifactId>
         <version>${cxf.rt.version}</version>
         <scope>test</scope>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
         <artifactId>cxf-rt-frontend-simple</artifactId>
         <version>${cxf.rt.version}</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
         <artifactId>cxf-rt-transports-http</artifactId>
         <version>${cxf.rt.version}</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
         <artifactId>cxf-rt-frontend-jaxws</artifactId>
         <version>${cxf.rt.version}</version>
      </dependency>
      <!-- Jetty is needed if you're using the CXFServlet -->
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
         <artifactId>cxf-rt-transports-http-jetty</artifactId>
         <version>${cxf.rt.version}</version>
      </dependency>
   </dependencies>
</project>

Running Client

Make sure that the server is still running on your machine. In case, if it has timed out, restart the server with the following command −

mvn -Pserver

You will see the following message on the console −

Listening on port 5000 ...

Now, before the server times out which we have set to 5 minutes, open another command line window and start the client with the following command −

mvn -Pclient

You will see a message similar to the following on the command line −

Hi tutorialspoint

Note that tutorialspoint is our user name. You will get a greeting with your own name.

In the next chapter, we will learn how to use CXF in a JAX-WS (Apache CXF API for XML Web Services) project.