WSDL Generation

The ATL Server framework will automatically generate the WSDL for the Web service. The WSDL is generated dynamically at runtime based on an SRF template and attribute-injected metadata and functions for the Web service. For example, in the HelloWorld example from earlier in this chapter, the attribute-injected code includes the following line:

 HANDLER_ENTRY_SDL("Default", CHelloWorldService,  ::HelloWorldService::CHelloWorldService, GenHelloWorldWSDL) 

This macro is similar to the HANDLER_ENTRY macro in the HANDLER_MAP for ATL Server request handlers and, in fact, the HANDLER_ENTRY_SDL macro will eventually delegate to the HANDLER_ENTRY macro. However, it also contains additional information such as the name of the handler from which to retrieve the WSDL ( GenHelloWorldWSDL , or whatever is specified in the sdl parameter of the soap_handler attribute) and the Web service class from which to retrieve the metadata ( CHelloWorldService ).

The CSDLGenerator class and its base class _CSDLGenerator then use this information at runtime to retrieve the name of the Web service, its namespace URI, and its metadata. It then processes a WSDL SRF template, which uses the metadata to generate the WSDL.