Introduction › Workflow Web Service Basics › Error Handling

Error Handling

If an error occurs with a Web method, a SOAP Fault is returned. The SOAP Fault is the standard means of returning exception information for Web services.

The Fault message contains standardized <Message> and <Code> elements, however, the <Detail> element is the most informative. The <Detail> element contains <errorID> and <Message> elements. The <Message> contains an English string that describes errors. The <Message> elements are more suitable for developers and more appropriate messages should display for users.

Example

The following illustrates a SOAP Fault when bad parameters are supplied to LogIn() method:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
	<soapenv:Body>
		<soapenv:Fault>
			<faultcode>soapenv:Server.userException</faultcode>
			<faultstring>com.ejbtech.processmanager.services.PMServiceException: Malformed URL</faultstring>
			<detail>
				<com.ejbtech.processmanager.services.PMServiceException xsi:type="ns1:PMServiceException" xmlns:ns1="urn:services.processmanager.ejbtech.com">
					<errorID xsi:type="xsd:string" xsi:nil="true"/>
					<message xsi:type="xsd:string">Malformed URL</message>
				</com.ejbtech.processmanager.services.PMServiceException>
			</detail>
		</soapenv:Fault>
	</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>