Re: [GSoC 2014] Add support for WSDL generation to LuaSOAP - Introduction

[Daurnimator <quae@...>]

On 25 February 2014 00:45, Dammina Sahabandu <dmsahabandu@gmail.com> wrote:
> WSDL

Oh man... that's a road that is no fun to go down.

I spent months getting my WSDL parser/framework working, and had to
visit every dark corner of every XML spec to get there.
(see http://www.innoq.com/de/ws-standards-poster/innoQ%20WS-Standards%20Poster%202007-02.pdf
for the horrors that lie ahead, most are >100 pages of docs each)

e.g.:
you need an xml schema <=> lua data type converter; in here composite
types can get horrendously complex
you need an xml parser that respects namespaces; yet doesn't drop
aliases (as they can be used much later in q-names)
you need an entire network stack, including TCP, SSL, HTTP and
more..... and these needs to have apis for everything so you can match
up specs like WSSecurity
there's at least 2 different versions of everything.... most of which
have some known/intentional exception that makes you break another
spec

Furthermore, the bulk of wsdl files out there don't even meet the
specs; but are produced from buggy C# software.
AND, for all I tried, there aren't many test suites out there..... you
have no idea if what you did was correct.


I'm so glad most of the specs were dumped and the web moved on to
simple JSON REST apis;
Those at least can be explained in a sub-20 page document.
However, many legacy/enterprise APIs hang around that still cling to
the Web-Services model of years ago;

In the end I wish I just handcrafted generators/parsers for the ~100
different XML messages I dealt with.

If you embark on your quest, I wish you well, but know the enormity of
the beast you're facing.