Web Services with SAAJ - Java SOA - page 256

Adding an Attachment to an Outbound SOAP

Message

Problem

You want to add an attachment to an outbound SOAP message.

Solution

Use the SOAPMessage.createAttachmentPart method and add the data to your Attach-
mentPart using its setContent method.

Discussion

There are four possible content types that you can use in setting attachment values:
▪ String

▪ Stream
▪ javax.xml.transform.Source

▪ javax.activation.DataHandler
Here is the basic idea:

AttachmentPart attachment = message.createAttachmentPart();
String data = "Some attachment data";
attachment.setContent(data, "text/plain");
attachment.setContentID("my-data");
message.addAttachmentPart(attachment);

This is the simplest way to do it if your attachment uses data that fits into a string. If
you have binary data, such as an image or PDF, or an XML Source , you can use the
javax.activation.DataHandler class and add the contents to the attachment using the
DataHandler :

URL url = new URL("http://java.sun.com/im/logo_sun_small_sdn.gif");
DataHandler dataHandler = new DataHandler(url);
AttachmentPart att = msg.createAttachmentPart(dataHandler);
msg.addAttachmentPart(att);

The javax.activation.DataHandler class has been around for some time in the JavaBeans
Activation Framework, but it is a new addition to Java SE 6. This class provides a unified in-