First, thank you to Kris Jones and João Fernandes for your help. Your assistance guided me towards my final solution.
I must complete this story for everyone who finds themselves as confused as I was. I am now successful consuming my SAP web services. There are so many pieces that were needed to make it happen; I am shocked that I couldnât explicitly find answers to my problems. Well here is what I did. 1st Issue â I used Dreamweaver > Application Panel > Web Services > plus-sign (+) to create a ColdFusion proxy to the SAP web service. This is where I was first confused. You see, in Dreamweaver you can drag and drop the web service proxy into your code and it creates a cfinvoke tag with associated arguments. Well, I knew that my web service only took two arguments, but the proxy created three. Here is what it looked like: <cfinvoke webservice="http://...sap/ZSVC_EMPLOYEE_DATA?sap-client=090&wsdl=1.1"; method="ZSVC_EMPLOYEE_DATA" returnvariable="aBAPIRETURN"> <cfinvokeargument name="NACHN" value="enter_value_here"/> <cfinvokeargument name="RESULTS" value="enter_value_here"/> <cfinvokeargument name="VORNA" value="enter_value_here"/> </cfinvoke> What is âRESULTSâ? Well, I will skip everything I did wrong and tell you what it is. I am not an expert, so please forgive any mistakes in my explanation. If you look at the WSDL for this file, you will notice that there is an input element named âresultsâ and there is also an output element named âresultsâ. - <xsd:element name="ZSVC_EMPLOYEE_DATA"> - <xsd:complexType> - <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element name="NACHN" minOccurs="0" type="tns:char25" /> <xsd:element name="RESULTS" type="tns:TABLE_OF_ZSVC_HRSTRUC" /> <xsd:element name="VORNA" minOccurs="0" type="tns:char25" /> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> - <xsd:element name="ZSVC_EMPLOYEE_DATAResponse"> - <xsd:complexType> - <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element name="RESULTS" type="tns:TABLE_OF_ZSVC_HRSTRUC" /> <xsd:element name="RETURN" type="tns:BAPIRETURN" /> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> This is called an âinoutâ variable. I had never heard of this before. I thought that the only way to get something returned from a webservice was if it came to you in the returnvariable. This is incorrect. A web service can take an inout variable that is passed to it and then write new values to it for use on the calling web page. 2nd Issue â Knowing about the existence of âinoutâ variables wasnât enough. I had a difficult time learning how to use it. If you have an inout variable, you need to set the value equal to the name of the variable⦠but read carefully here â donât include the customary pound signs (#) around the variable. Using my example above: <cfinvokeargument name="RESULTS" value="RESULTS"/> Let me reiterate that you donât see any pound signs in the above cfinvokeargument. You will not be able to output your results if you mistakenly use pound signs. Now you can see the results. <cfdump var="#RESULTS#"> 3rd Issue â So once I figured out issues 1 and 2, I was finally able to cfdump the results and see the available methods. In my case, I needed to use a method âgetItem()â. So I added another cfdump for the getItem() method. This showed me an array, and the first item of the array was a function that contained methods for the data I was attempting to access. I was getting close. <cfdump var="#RESULTS.getItem()#"> 4th Issue - This was not the end of my struggles. I had to figure out how to access the values. My experiments kept failing. How can I get the values? I wasnât comprehending that getItem() was a method to get the âItemâ array. And likewise inside the Item array, the methods were similarly written â the getEmail() was a method to get the âEmailâ. I needed to get rid of the âgetâ to use the data values. Here is the solution: <cfdump var="#RESULTS.Item[1].Email#"> Done! And as a note, I also learned that ColdFusion can consume inout variables, but it cannot publish them. The following links are to some of the web page articles and discussions that were critical towards me finally figuring out what to do. Connecting to a Lotus Notes WebService http://www.sagewire.org/advanced-cfml-techniques/Connecting-to-Lotus-Notes-WebService-55190.aspx Programming ColdFusion MX: Web Services http://www.webreference.com/programming/coldfusion/1/5.html Notes on Interfacing ColdFusion MX to External Web Services Requiring Complex-within-Complex XML Documents as Input http://web.archive.org/web/20070309173903/http://hcc.musc.edu/research/shared_resources/xml_complex_types_to_cf_structure_notes.cfm Handling complex data types http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/7/htmldocs/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=ColdFusion_Documentation&file=00001554.htm Axis User's Guide http://ws.apache.org/axis/java/user-guide.html Consume NET web service with complex arguments http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/thread.cfm/threadid:52942 >Hi Brian, > >we invoke SAP webservices with ColdFusion and we usually use this approach: > ><cfset params = structnew()> ><cfset params.firstInput = someting> ><cfset params.secondInput = someOtherValue> ><cfset params.returnedTable = structnew()> ><cfset params.anotherTable = structnew()> > ><cfset ws = createObject( 'webservice' , sapwdsl )> ><cfset ws.someMethod( params )> > >-- > >João Fernandes > >http://www.onflexwithcf.org >http://www.riapt.org >Portugal Adobe User Group (http://aug.riapt.org) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;192386516;25150098;k Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:304692 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
