Refreshing a webservice in the Cache
Web services are great - but they are not a magic bullet. You have to become familiar will all their little quirks to use them effectively. This is a nice tip I picked up on the email list for BACFUG (I love the retro logo). Sometimes you might have a CFC that you are calling as a webservice like this:
<cfscript>
// service wsdl file
sdl = 'http:/' & '/mydomain.com/WS/myservice.cfc?wsdl';
// create object
sv = CreateObject('webservice', sdl);
</cfscript>
If you make a change to a method in the CFC (add or change an argument - or a type), and you refresh your page that uses the web service, you may not see the change. That is because the CF Server creates a "stub" (a proxy class) from your WSDL and puts it in the cache. It does not automatically know that the file has changed. You can refresh the cache from the CF administrator, but you may not always have access to it (if you are on a shared server). In fact, the CF Admin method doesn't always work for some reason. Not to worry, Tarik Ahmed (Cflex.net) offers this programmatic solution.
// service wsdl file
sdl = 'http:/' & '/mydomain.com/WS/myservice.cfc?wsdl';
// create object
sv = CreateObject('webservice', sdl);
</cfscript>
<cfscript>
// service wsdl file
sdl = 'http:/' & '/mydomain.com/WS/myservice.cfc?wsdl';
// create object
factory = CreateObject('JAVA', "coldfusion.server.ServiceFactory");
// reference to the XmlRpcService
RpcService = factory.XmlRpcService;
// refresh the object in question
RpcService.refreshWebService(sdl);
</cfscript>
// service wsdl file
sdl = 'http:/' & '/mydomain.com/WS/myservice.cfc?wsdl';
// create object
factory = CreateObject('JAVA', "coldfusion.server.ServiceFactory");
// reference to the XmlRpcService
RpcService = factory.XmlRpcService;
// refresh the object in question
RpcService.refreshWebService(sdl);
</cfscript>
7 Comments
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Unbelievable timing! I had just made a post on my blog a few hours ago about this being a negative to authoring web services in ColdFusion and that I hadn't found any documentation on a workaround.
Thanks! -
This also explains why the Web Services and Remoting Services panels in Flash don't update with changes when hitting refresh. I wonder if there's some way to fix that... -
Glad I could help. Sometimes I just stumble onto something and say "wow... I didn't know that." It usually ends up in a blog (ha). -
We're still having issues with some of our web services since upgrading to MX7.
On one particular server, the WS (which ran fine under MX6.1) is returning the dreaded "Could not generate stub objects for web service invocation".
But when I pull up the WSDL in the browser, there are no errors... and, like I said, it was operating fine under MX6. And, in fact, the same CFC runs fine as a webservice on another MX7 box.
I've tried refreshing the WS using factory code similar to above... and I've tried completely deleting the WS from cache (via factory or cfadmin). Still returns the error.
Why would the WSDL come up fine, but MX7 still has a problem with registering/caching the webservice? I'm thinking it's a directory permissions issue... but everything appears to be set up exactly the same as it was under MX6, and the same as the other MX7 box that's working.
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