Enable handling of empty SOAP Body messages

There is a special case in Activator handling of AS4 messages when:

• An inbound SOAP Body contains no payload
• The inbound payloads are packaged as attachments

An equivalent case exists for Activator WebServices exchanges. For both AS4 and for WebServices the Activator handling of messages with no payload in the SOAP Body is controlled by the same system property, ws.allowEmptySOAPBody.

However it is important to note that the default behavior for WebServices and for AS4 messages is not the same:

• For WebServices message consumption, the default setting of ws.allowEmptySOAPBody is true.
• For AS4 message consumption, the default setting of ws.allowEmptySOAPBody is false.

So unlike configuration for WebServices, you must expressly activate the handling of empty SOAP Body messages for AS4. To do this, you modify in the Activator tuning.properties file.

About the tuning.properties file

To enable AS4 empty SOAP Body handling you must edit Activator tuning.properties file. This file is located in <install directory>/conf.

The properties in this file are applied only to the node where the tuning.properties file is located. You must set properties specified in this file by modifying the file for each node.

By default, tuning.properties is empty. This indicates that all of its possible entries are operating at their default values.

Enable empty SOAP Body handling

To enable empty AS4 empty SOAP Body handling:

1. Go to <install directory>/conf and open the tuning.properties file in a text editor.
2. Add the property:
3. ws.allowEmptySOAPBody
3. Set the value of the property to "true":
4. ws.allowEmptySOAPBody=true
4. Save the file.
5. Restart Activator.

Related topics

• AS4
• AS4 messages
• AS4 metadata
• Message Partition Channels (MPC)
• AS4 user authentication
• Large message splitting and joining
• Configure a one-way client pull
• AS4 use case: One-way push (MMD initiated)
• AS4 use case: One-way pull (MMD initiated)
• AS4 tasks