TechNote

Passing complex data structures to web services

Issue

When passing complex data structures (arrays of objects, multidimensional arrays, objects containing arrays, and so on) to or from a web service operation, an error similar to the following occurs:

Error opening URL "<your web service url>" faultactor: http://webservices.components.crd faultNamespaceURI: undefined element: undefined detail: undefined faultstring: Unable to connect to endpoint: URL "your web service url" faultcode: Server.Connection

Reason

The WebServiceConnector supports simple and complex data types, however ColdFusion and Axis will generate a connection error based on the following conditions:

Coldfusion web service
Data sent as a simple Array works, but an object with an array as a property will create an error. For example:

 var foo:Object = new Object(); var bar:Array = new Array("a", "b", "c"); foo.baz = bar; // ----- The following line does not work ----- var logResult = resourceService.logMe(foo);   // ----- The following line works as expected ----- var logResult = resourceService.logMe(bar);

Axis web service
Sending arrays of objects to or from Flash and an Axis web service does not work because the SOAP messages generated are not well-formed.

Solution

If you need to pass complex data types to and from web services using ColdFusion or Axis servers, you can use Flash Remoting to send and receive the data.

Note: No issues with sending or receiving complex data types with Flash have been found with .NET web services.