Displaying response format from WSDL?
One of soapUI's most useful abilities for me is translating a WSDL into readable form. The project lists the WSDL's operations; I can get the format of any operation's request from the skeleton "Reque...
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I don't think I'm facing a "specific issue"; I'm facing a highly general one, that the WSDL is an awkward format for conveying information to humans, however convenient it may be for computers.
I'm responsible for writing documentation that explains APIs to developers who want to use them. The awkwardness of the WSDL means that I have to translate it into a more comprehensible form, and also means that the translation is a very labor-intensive job.
Yesterday I spent a very long day -- about ten hours -- translating the description of one operation's response message from WSDL definitions into a readable format. This was not because I am unaccustomed to WSDLs; it was just because the message is complex, and the manual labor required to translate it took that long. How long would it have taken a suitable tool to produce the same result? Probably less than a second.
I appreciate your suggestion that I use the structured WSDL listing in the WSDL Content tab. I wasn't aware of it, and it will make my work easier the next time I have to do this. It won't make that big a difference, though. It will help me to find the definitions of message elements faster, but that isn't a major part of the process.
I'm thinking about writing my own tool to generate a model response message, or even something that is semantically equivalent but closer in form to the description I need to produce. I'm certainly capable of doing that, but I don't want to waste my time reinventing the wheel... if this particular wheel has already been invented.
I'm responsible for writing documentation that explains APIs to developers who want to use them. The awkwardness of the WSDL means that I have to translate it into a more comprehensible form, and also means that the translation is a very labor-intensive job.
Yesterday I spent a very long day -- about ten hours -- translating the description of one operation's response message from WSDL definitions into a readable format. This was not because I am unaccustomed to WSDLs; it was just because the message is complex, and the manual labor required to translate it took that long. How long would it have taken a suitable tool to produce the same result? Probably less than a second.
I appreciate your suggestion that I use the structured WSDL listing in the WSDL Content tab. I wasn't aware of it, and it will make my work easier the next time I have to do this. It won't make that big a difference, though. It will help me to find the definitions of message elements faster, but that isn't a major part of the process.
I'm thinking about writing my own tool to generate a model response message, or even something that is semantically equivalent but closer in form to the description I need to produce. I'm certainly capable of doing that, but I don't want to waste my time reinventing the wheel... if this particular wheel has already been invented.