proposal

SOAP & XML

This is a proposal, and the most speculative of the three. It sketches how Akuma could mock legacy SOAP services - XML envelopes over a single endpoint - using the same data models as the JSON styles.

Why bother with SOAP?

SOAP is far from dead: banking, telco, government, healthcare, and countless enterprise integrations still ship it. Teams building against those services have almost no pleasant way to mock them. If Akuma can stand up a believable SOAP endpoint from the same YAML that describes a REST one, it reaches users no JSON-only mock tool can.

How SOAP differs from the engine's assumptions

  • One endpoint, many operations. Routing isn't path + method; it's the SOAPAction header or the name of the first child element inside the SOAP Body.
  • XML in, XML out. Requests and responses are XML envelopes, not JSON.
  • Faults, not status codes. Errors are <soap:Fault> elements, typically still HTTP 500.

Proposed shape

A SOAP service maps each operation to the same operation/schema/key engine, but routes by SOAP action and renders an XML response:

yaml 
soap:
  path: /UserService
  operations:
    GetUser:
      operation: get
      key: guid              # read from the request envelope
      response: { schema: User, format: xml }
    DeleteUser:
      operation: delete
      key: guid
      response: { schema: User, format: xml }

The data models (schemas:) are unchanged - only the routing and the response format differ. That's the whole point: one model, many protocols.

WSDL

Many SOAP clients want a WSDL to generate stubs. A generated, served WSDL describing the declared operations and schema types would make the mock drop-in for those clients. This is a stretch goal, listed here so the design leaves room for it.

Open questions

  • Response templating. Auto-map a schema row to XML elements, or require an explicit envelope template per operation?
  • Routing key. Trust SOAPAction, parse the body element, or support both?
  • Faults. How are the existing error definitions mapped onto <soap:Fault> (code, string, detail)?
  • WSDL. Generate from schemas, or let the author supply a static one?
  • Scope. SOAP 1.1 vs 1.2; do we need WS-Security / headers at all for a mock?