getHeaders method from SoapHandler interface

Question

Could you please explain what exactly the method getHeaders from SOAPHandler interface is supposed to do?

http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/5/api/javax/xml/ws/handler/soap/SOAPHandler.html#getHeaders%28%29

I'm not sure if it creates additional headers or if it should just tell the runtime which headers the message should have.

I've been sweeping the internet looking for detailed information but I couldn't find any. I think is is so basic and obvious that no documentation is needed LOL :-)

Thanks

Answer 1

The description you're looking for can be found in the JAX-WS 2.2 spec in the section titled, "10.2.1 SOAP mustUnderstand Processing". Inbound messages require an additional processing step that occurs before the start of normal handler processing. Basically, the set of QName instances returned from getHeaders allows the handler to contribute to the full set of SOAP headers that a node understands (the other contributors to the full set are documented in the spec). If an inbound SOAP header contains the mustUnderstand attribute with a value of 1 or true, then an exception will be generated if that header can't be marked as understood.

Answer 2

EDIT: Apparently I was wrong and after reading further I must agree, therefore please ignore this.

A SOAP message is a HTTP request. HTTP requests can have number of different headers as a part of the message (e.g. in SOAP 1.1 there was a header called SOAPAction, which could contain the name of the service and operation). The getHeaders function returns the list of all the headers QNames that came with the request, so in case of previous example, you would get a list that would contain element of value "SOAPAction".