WS-Addressing defines two mechanisms to associate an action with
input, output and fault elements within a WSDL port type.
3.1 Explicit
Association
The action may be explicitly associated using the wsa:Action
attribute or in the absence of the attribute the action is defined
by the rule in section 3.3.2.
For example consider the following WSDL excerpt:
Example
3-1. Explicit specification of wsa:Action value in a WSDL
description.
<definitions targetNamespace="http://example.com/stockquote" ...>
...
<portType name="StockQuotePortType">
<operation name="GetLastTradePrice">
<input message="tns:GetTradePricesInput"
wsa:Action="http://example.com/GetQuote"/>
<output message="tns:GetTradePricesOutput"
wsa:Action="http://example.com/Quote"/>
</operation>
</portType>
...
</definitions>
The action for the input of the GetLastTradePrice operation
within the StockQuotePortType is explicitly defined to be
http://example.com/GetQuote. The action for the output of this same
operation is http://example.com/Quote.
3.2 Default Action
Pattern
In the absence of the wsa:Action attribute, the following
pattern is used to construct a default action for inputs and
outputs. The general form of an action URI is as follows:
Example
3-2. Structure of defaulted wsa:Action URI.
[target namespace]/[port type name]/[input|output name]
The "/" is a literal character to be included in the action. The
values of the properties are as defined below.
[target namespace] is the target namespace
(/definition/@targetNamespace). If [target namespace] ends with a
"/" an additional "/" is not added.
[port type name] is the name of the port type
(/definition/portType/@name).
[input|output name] is the name of the element as defined in
Section 2.4.5 of
WSDL 1.1.
For fault messages, this pattern is not applied. Instead, the
following URI is the default action URI for fault messages:
http://www.w3.org/2004/12/addressing/fault
For example consider the following WSDL excerpt:
Example
3-3. Example WSDL without explicit wsa:Action values with
explicit message names.
<definitions targetNamespace="http://example.com/stockquote" ...>
...
<portType name="StockQuotePortType">
<operation name="GetLastTradePrice">
<input message="tns:GetTradePricesInput" name="GetQuote"/>
<output message="tns:GetTradePricesOutput" name="Quote"/>
</operation>
</portType>
...
</definitions>
[targetNamespace] = http://example.com/stockquote
[port type name] = StockQuotePortType
[input name] = GetQuote
[output name] = Quote
Applying the pattern above with these values we have:
input action =
http://example.com/stockquote/StockQuotePortType/GetQuote
output action =
http://example.com/stockquote/StockQuotePortType/Quote
WSDL defines rules for a default input or output name if the
name attribute is not present. Consider the following example:
Example
3-4. Example WSDL without explicit wsa:Action values or
explicit message names.
<definitions targetNamespace="http://example.com/stockquote" ...>
...
<portType name="StockQuotePortType">
<operation name="GetLastTradePrice">
<input message="tns:GetTradePricesInput"/>
<output message="tns:GetTradePricesOutput"/>
</operation>
</portType>
...
</definitions>
[targetNamespace] = http://example.com/stockquote
[port type name] = StockQuotePortType
According to the rules defined in WSDL 2.4.5, if the name
attribute is absent for the input of a request response operation
the default value is the name of the operation "Request"
appended.
[input name] = GetLastTradePriceRequest
Likewise, the output defaults to the operation name with
"Response" appended.
[output name] = GetLastTradePriceResponse
Applying the pattern above with these values we have:
input action =
http://example.com/stockquote/StockQuotePortType/GetLastTradePriceRequest
output action =
http://example.com/stockquote/StockQuotePortType/GetLastTradePriceResponse