Consuming Web Services

In the last section, we walked through the fundamentals of creating Web services. As we discovered, Web service creation in ColdFusion is exceptionally easy when we utilize the functionality inherent in ColdFusion components (CFCs). So how do we “consume” a Web service from within ColdFusion? How do we utilize data from other ColdFusion servers or disparate platforms, such as Microsoft .NET and Oracle9i, running on other networks? As long as these Web services are standards compliant, we should have no problem using them.

Consult the WSDL

The first step to consuming a Web service is obtaining the URL of the WSDL document for the service you’ll be using. The WSDL document contains all the information you will need to call the Web service (methods, parameters, data types, expected return values, and so on). In Listing 59.14, let’s take a look at part of the WSDL for our number translation Web service from a previous section.