Configuring Axis client within webapp

[Jim Carlson]

Hello,
I'm trying to determine the correct way to invoke a web service, from within a servlet container context, which is itself running an Axis server.
My specific scenario is that I'm running Tomcat 4.1, and I have a webapp which contains the Axis jars and server-config.wsdd. This webapp should both publish and consume my web services. (In each case, the other party is another, similar Tomcat/Axis server.) In addition, I have some custom typemappings that need to work on both client and server end.
I have no problem configuring the Axis server to publish my services with the custom typemappings. However, I don't know how to create a Service and a Call, from within the same webapp, which use the typemappings from server-config.wsdd. It seems like there should be an easy way to do this (without replicating config information anywhere).
I can get an instance of AxisServer by calling AxisServletBase.getEngine(someOtherServlet). This AxisServlet has the typemappings from server-config.wsdd. Next, I've tried the following techniques:

new Service(axisServer.getConfig()).createCall();

new Service(axisServer.getClientEngine().getConfig()).createCall();

new Service().setTypeMappingRegistry(axisServer.getTypeMappingRegistry());

... and some other permutations as well. In the first case, Call.invoke() behaves very oddly, I think because it has server-side handlers instead of client-side handlers. In both the first and second cases, a subsequent check of Service.getTypeMappingRegistry() shows that my custom mappings did not actually transfer over. In the third case.... well here's the implementation of Service.setTypeMappingRegistry() from axis/client/Service.java:

public void setTypeMappingRegistry(TypeMappingRegistry registry)
throws ServiceException {
}

A no-op. That was a fun surprise. Anyhow, I will continue digging through the source, but I thought someone on this list would probably already know the *correct* way to acheive this. Note that I am trying to avoid having a second client.wsdd file, or programmatically copying over the individual Mappings, because both of these techniques unnecessarily replicate configuration data. I hope there is something better.


Thanks!

Jim