Webinterface REST/JSON vs Middleware SOAP/XML

Introduction

JavaScript

Webdevelopers use a lot of JavaScript on the clientside. There are things which JavaScript is good at and there are things you're better of not doing in JavaScript. JSON and REST are often used by JavaScript developers and XML and SOAP are shunned.

JSON

JSON (see http://www.json.org/), the JavaScript Object Notation, is an easy lightweight notation which can be used to transfer JavaScript objects; objects can be transported as strings. JSON is a lot easier for JavaScript then for example XML. JSON has some query languages (such as XQuery / XPATH for XML) which are still work in progress but seem to work to some extend; http://stackoverflow.com/questions/777455/is-there-a-query-language-for-json. For Java there are libraries available to make working with JSON more easy (such as JSON-lib and Jackson JSON).

REST

Since webinterfaces nowadays often require asynchronous interaction with the server to for example validate values in forms without requiring a submit of the entire form, services on the server are often deployed.

For service interaction, JavaScript can easily do HTTP POST and GET requests but it is harder to create entire SOAP messages. An example on how asynchronous HTTP requests can be done from JavaScript; http://rest.elkstein.org/2008/02/using-rest-in-javascript.html

REST services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer) are an alternative to SOAP services. REST services often do not have an interface defined (WSDL and WADL are disputable for REST services); there is often less strict message exchange (if you want to validate messages or throw exceptions, you have to do it yourself, they are application specific and not inherent to the protocol). For the sake of quick (webinterface) development, less strict standards can be a choice.

Oracle SOA and webinterfaces

This is an Oracle SOA / Java blog, so where do those fit in? Well, Middleware often has to link in some way to the Frontend or Frontend oriented backend systems. The Oracle SOA Middleware is heavily XML/SOAP based and the Frontend likes JSON and REST services a lot better. This is a gap which needs to be bridged.

SOAP and REST services

Oracle supplies an HTTP binding adapter which can be used to send and receive HTTP requests. See http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E25054_01/dev.1111/e10224/sca_bindingcomps.htm#autoId3 for more information. This adapter allows sending/receiving HTTP GET and POST requests and is capable of receiving XML from REST services. The Spring component can also be used for REST service interaction and since it is custom Java code which is used, it can more easily be expanded with additional functionality; http://technology.amis.nl/2009/12/16/soa-suite-11g-using-spring-component-to-mimic-http-binding-and-integrate-restful-services/

JSON and XML

Java

When examining the differences between JSON and XML, one major problem arises; there can be no strict fixed conversion between the two. See for example the below article on a user forum of one of the better known/performing JSON libraries (Jackson JSON); http://jackson-users.ning.com/forum/topics/xml-to-json-conversion-using; JSON and XML information models are fundamentally incompatible. Jackson JSON is good at converting JSON to Java objects and the other way around. Converting to XML however will most likely not be implemented because of the difference in information models.

JSON-lib (http://json-lib.sourceforge.net/) however does allow a conversion of JSON to XML and the other way around (although not reversible) with relatively little code. Of course certain assumptions need to be made to allow the conversion to work. If you're interested, you can read more about this on; http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2006/05/31/converting-between-xml-and-json.html

XSLT

Going from XML to JSON is specific and can be modeled using XSLT to be able to support different conversion patterns. See http://controlfreak.net/xml-to-json-in-xslt-a-toolkit/ for some useful examples.

Conversion JSON to XML and XML to JSON webservice

I wanted to be able to easily convert JSON from the webinterface and REST services (Java code) to XML in order to be more flexible in BPEL with for example XPATH and XSLT. When I have XML, I can use XPATH to create the relevant JSON again if the default transformation is insufficient. I created a webservice based on JSON-lib to do the conversion. I used JAX WS to make developing/exposing the methods as a webservice easy. The code required is the following;

package ms.testapp.jsonxml;

import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

import javax.jws.WebMethod;
import javax.jws.WebParam;
import javax.jws.WebResult;
import javax.jws.WebService;

import net.sf.json.JSON;
import net.sf.json.JSONArray;
import net.sf.json.JSONObject;
import net.sf.json.JSONSerializer;
import net.sf.json.xml.XMLSerializer;

import org.apache.commons.lang.StringEscapeUtils;

@WebService
public class JsonXml {
   
    @WebMethod
    @WebResult(name = "xml")
    public String JsonToXml(@WebParam(name = "namespace")String namespace, @WebParam(name = "rootelement")String rootelement,@WebParam(name = "jsonstring")String jsonStr) {
            XMLSerializer serializer = new XMLSerializer();
            serializer.setRootName(rootelement);
            serializer.addNamespace("", namespace);
            JSON json = JSONSerializer.toJSON(jsonStr);
            String xml = serializer.write(json);
           
            return xml;
    }

    @WebMethod
    @WebResult(name = "json")
    public String EscapedXmlToJson(@WebParam(name = "xmlstring")String xmlStr) {
        XMLSerializer xmlSerializer = new XMLSerializer();
        JSON json = xmlSerializer.read(StringEscapeUtils.unescapeXml(xmlStr)); 
        return( json.toString() ); 
    }
   
    @WebMethod(exclude=true)
    public String XmlToJson(@WebParam(name = "xmlstring")String xmlStr) {
        XMLSerializer xmlSerializer = new XMLSerializer(); 
        JSON json = xmlSerializer.read( xmlStr ); 
        return( json.toString() ); 
    }
/*
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String Json = "{'foo':'bar',\n" +
        " 'coolness':2.0,\n" +
        " 'altitude':39000,\n" +
        " 'pilot':{'firstName':'Buzz',\n" +
        "          'lastName':'Aldrin'},\n" +
        " 'mission':'apollo 11'}";
        String Xml = new JsonXml().JsonToXml("http://www.google.com","root",Json);
        System.out.println(Json);
        System.out.println(Xml);
        Json = new JsonXml().XmlToJson(Xml);
        System.out.println(Json);
        String escapedXml = StringEscapeUtils.escapeXml(Xml);
        System.out.println(escapedXml);
        Json = new JsonXml().EscapedXmlToJson(escapedXml);
        System.out.println(Json);
       
    }
*/
}

The full code is available here; https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6693935/blog/JsonXmlApp.zip. There is also a JAR deployment profile (in addition to the WAR deployment profile) in the package and the dependencies are included. For Java developers, it is recommended (for performance reasons to avoid webservice overhead) to use the Jar deployment profile. From BPEL (in a service oriented landscape) it is more easy to have the functionality available as a webservice. The main method has been used as a sort of unittest.

Please mind, the conversion is not reversible and specific.I personally think the JSON to XML conversion is more useful then the XML to JSON conversion since that can be achieved more specifically with XSLT. I have not exposed the XmlToJson method since it's hard to call the method as a webservice with an XML parameter containing a non-escaped XML fragment.

The method of converting JSON to XML, has the benefit of not requiring an XSD schema describing the XML for the conversion and not requiring a Java object representation of the data. This has the benefit that one service/class is enough to do the conversions different messages (at least JSON to XML).

Further suggestions; JSON and BPEL

When you want to use the XML created by converting JSON in BPEL, you need to do the following;
- create a schema for the created XML message and include it in a used WSDL file
- create a variable using this schema
- use ora:parseEscapedXML to assign the output of the JsonToXml to the variable
- use the variable however you like

Because this can be cumbersome (creating the schema from the XML message, JDeveloper has a wizard but still...), it's advisable to create another webservice with two input variables; JSON string and JSON path expression returning the result of the JSON path expression on the JSON string. This can easily be accomplished by using for example http://code.google.com/p/json-path/. This way if you want to use a single variable from the JSON string, you can query for it directly and you don't need to create an XSD schema for the result of the JSON to XML conversion since it is a simple string. Use can use something like; String result = JsonPath.read(jsonstring, jsonpathstring).toString(). This is however not recommended if you need a lot of variables from the JSON string since calling a webservice is also overhead and might cost performance.

Packaging the above JSON samples in an XPATH library (see for example http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/dev.1111/e10224/bp_appx_functs.htm) might be a better solution then wrapping them in webservices since it further increases their ease of use and performance in BPEL. If the services need to be re-used outside of BPEL by for example other middleware products, webservices might be the better solution.