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Troubleshooting a service description

This page is dedicated to helping you learn how to successfully create a service description file that connects to a web service.

Enable additional logging

The first step to any troubleshooting is to enable the trace logging. Add the trace string "com.ibm.form.*=finest" using the appropriate method according to your deployment.

Now you can execute the service and there will be a trace file that contains more detailed information about the service call.

Verify service URL

Within the logs you will see how the URL is built up (with whatever parameters you supply) 

[17/04/14 13:49:12:534 EDT] 00001884 HTTPServiceTr 1 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.example.HTTPServiceTransport run Request URL is https://server:port/context

Identify how the parameters/constants are resolved

Take this declaration in the XML: 

<constant>
  <id>Content-Type</id>
  <value><![CDATA[text/xml; charset=utf-8]]></value>
</constant>
 ```

You would then see this in the trace.log:

```text
[17/04/14 13:49:12:503 EDT] 00001884 Mapper        3 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.impl.mapping.Mapper visit Looking up source value with scheme constant:Content-Type
[17/04/14 13:49:12:503 EDT] 00001884 Mapper        3 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.impl.mapping.Mapper visit Source value is not a list, performing simple mapping
[17/04/14 13:49:12:504 EDT] 00001884 Mapper        1 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.impl.mapping.Mapper visit Target value is com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.impl.mapping.MapValue@5adb4933
[17/04/14 13:49:12:504 EDT] 00001884 Mapper        3 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.impl.mapping.Mapper visit Resolving target transport:request-header-Content-Type
[17/04/14 13:49:12:504 EDT] 00001884 Mapper        1 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.impl.mapping.Mapper visit Source value is text/xml; charset=utf-8
[17/04/14 13:49:12:505 EDT] 00001884 Mapper        3 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.impl.mapping.Mapper visit Target value is not a string, or xml
[17/04/14 13:49:12:505 EDT] 00001884 Mapper        3 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.impl.mapping.Mapper visit Setting reference null to text/xml; charset=utf-8

Verify the content sent by the service: 

[17/04/14 13:49:12:514 EDT] 00001884 Mapper        1 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.services.impl.mapping.Mapper visit Source value is <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"&gt;&lt;SOAP-ENV:Body&gt;<tns:UpdateListItems xmlns:tns="http://namespace/soap/"&gt;&lt;tns:listName/&gt;&lt;tns:updates&gt;<Batch OnError="Continue" ListVersion="1"><Method ID="1" Cmd="New"><Field Name="Title">223456</Field></Method></Batch></tns:updates></tns:UpdateListItems></SOAP-ENV:Body></SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

Identify root cause of service failure 

[17/04/14 13:49:12:539 EDT] 00001884 StandardExcep E com.ibm.form.nitro.platform.StandardExceptionMapper toResponse 4ef795f1-8929-44ab-a7b9-366453cc2401
                                 com.ibm.form.nitro.service.exception.AppAdminUserException: Unable to successfully execute service call. Reason: java.util.ArrayList incompatible with java.lang.String

The error in this case, means that the service description has a string variable and it is trying to be assigned to a "list" or vice versa. After inspecting the xml file, we can see that there was an error in the servicemapping. The following was the line in error

<mapping source="parameter:listName" 
         sourceType="NOOP" 
         target="transport:request-entity" 
         targetRef="SOAP-ENV:Envelope/SOAP-ENV:Body/tns:UpdateListItems/tns:listName" 
         targetType="STRING" 
>

This mapping did not have a closing tag - therefore it was assumed to be a list object (rather then a string). The fix was to add a trailing slash:

<mapping source="parameter:listName" 
         sourceType="NOOP" 
         target="transport:request-entity" 
         targetRef="SOAP-ENV:Envelope/SOAP-ENV:Body/tns:UpdateListItems/tns:listName" 
         targetType="STRING" 
/>

Parent Topic: Service Description