View Savon Request XML without Sending to Server - ruby

Question

I'm using the Savon gem to make a SOAP request using code similar to what's below. It's working, but I would like to view/capture the request XML without actually making a call to their server. I can view it now after a request is made by sticking a debugger line after the request and inspecting the client variable.
Does anyone know of a way to view the request XML without actually making a request? I want to be able to validate the XML against a schema using Cucumber or Rspec.
client = Savon::Client.new do |wsdl, http|
wsdl.document = "http://fakesite.org/fake.asmx?wsdl"
end
client.request(:testpostdata, :xmlns => "http://fakesite.org/") do
soap.header = { :cAuthentication => {"UserName" => "MyName", "Password" => "MyPassword" } }
soap.body = { :xml_data => to_xml }
end

Answer 1

Using Savon 2 I do it this way, write a method that return the request body from the client.
client = Savon::Client.new(....)
this is not mentioned in the documentation
def get_request
# list of operations can be found using client.operations
ops = client.operation(:action_name_here)
# build the body of the xml inside the message here
ops.build(message: { id: 42, name: "Test User", age: 20 }).to_s
end

Answer 2

You can directly via the Savon::Client#build_request method.
Example:
request = client.build_request(:some_operation, some_payload)
request.body # Get the request body
request.headers # Get the request headers
Take a peak # https://github.com/savonrb/savon/blob/master/lib/savon/request.rb for the full doc.

Answer 3

I am using Savon 2.11 and I can accomplish it with globals in the client:
def client
#client ||= Savon.client(soap_version: 2,
wsdl: config.wsdl,
logger: Rails.logger,
log: true)
end
More info on the globals here.
Then the logger spits out the host, the http verb and the complete xml ("headers" and body) for both request and response.

Answer 4

While I'm sure there's a better way to do this, I just overrode response.
class Savon::SOAP::Request
def response
pp self.request.headers
puts
puts self.request.body
exit
end
end

Answer 5

They've updated the API since the last post. Set this setting in Savon.client: :pretty_print_xml => true. After your call, search the logs for SOAP request:. The output is put to stdout. Check the console console history if you're testing your connection from the console.

Answer 6

Savon uses HTTPI to execute SOAP requests. HTTPI is a common interface on top of various Ruby HTTP clients. You could probably mock/stub the HTTP request executed by Savon via:
HTTPI.expects(:post).with do |http|
SchemaValidation.validate(:get_user, http.body)
end
Please note that I used Mocha for mocking the SOAP request, getting the HTTP body and validating it against some validation method (pseudo-code).
Currently, Savon does not support building up requests without executing them. So the only way to validate the request would be to intercept it.
If you would need Savon to support this feature, please let me know and open a ticket over at GitHub.
EDIT: There's also savon_spec, which is a little helper for basic fixture-based testing with Savon.

Answer 7

I had the same issue and patched Savon as follows:
module Savon
class Client
def get_request_xml operation_name, locals
Savon::Builder.new(operation_name, #wsdl, #globals, locals).pretty
end
end
end
This builds the XML and returns it as a string without sending it to the API endpoint. It doesn't accept a block argument in the same way client.call does, so it won't be able to reproduce every type of request you're making, but it meets my needs for now.