SOAP Syntax

SOAP Building Blocks

A SOAP message is an ordinary XML document containing the following elements:

• A required Envelope element that identifies the XML document as a SOAP message
• An optional Header element that contains header information
• A required Body element that contains call and response information
• An optional Fault element that provides information about errors that occurred while processing the message

All the elements above are declared in the default namespace for the SOAP envelope:

http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope

and the default namespace for SOAP encoding and data types is:

http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding

Syntax Rules

Here are some important syntax rules:

• A SOAP message MUST be encoded using XML
• A SOAP message MUST use the SOAP Envelope namespace
• A SOAP message MUST use the SOAP Encoding namespace
• A SOAP message must NOT contain a DTD reference
• A SOAP message must NOT contain XML Processing Instructions

Skeleton SOAP Message

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<soap:Envelope
xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope"
soap:encodingStyle="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding">

<soap:Header>
  ...
  ...
</soap:Header>

<soap:Body>
  ...
  ...
  <soap:Fault>
    ...
    ...
  </soap:Fault>
</soap:Body>

</soap:Envelope>

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