Configuration

Subpages

Supplying a Configuration file to CXF

CXF can discover XML configuration files which you have written. For both web service clients and servers, the default location that CXF will look for a configuration for is "/cxf.xml" on the class path. For example, when running your application in a servlet container, this file is expected to be located in a /WEB-INF/classes folder of your web application.

...

A CXF configuration file is really a Spring configuration file, so all configuration files will start with the following:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd">

<!-- Configuration goes here! -->

</beans>

If you are new to Spring or do not desire to learn more about it, don't worry, you won't have to. The only piece of Spring that you will see is the <beans> element outlined above. Simply create this file, place it on your classpath, and add the configuration for a component you wish to configure (see below). Note starting with CXF 2.6.0, Maven users will need to add the following dependency for the cxf.xml file to be read:

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
   <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
   <version>3.0.6.RELEASE</version>  (or most recent supported)
</dependency>

Types of Configuration files

Client configuration file

Placing a cxf.xml file (or other-named file as configured above) in the classpath of the Web Service Client can be used to configure client-specific functionality. For example, the following client cxf.xml file turns off chunked transfer encoding for a specific service in requests and responses:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:http-conf="http://cxf.apache.org/transports/http/configuration"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://cxf.apache.org/transports/http/configuration
           http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/configuration/http-conf.xsd
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

  <http-conf:conduit 
           name="{urn:ebay:apis:eBLBaseComponents}Shopping.http-conduit">
      <http-conf:client AllowChunking="false"/>
  </http-conf:conduit>
</beans>

...

For an example configuration via a cxf-servlet.xml file, our system tests have a cxf-servlet.xml file which is explicitly referenced in the init-param element in the web.xml deployment descriptor. (Note it is not necessary to use the init-param element if you use the file name "cxf-servlet.xml"; this is the default name that CXF uses to look for such a file.)

For an example of using a Spring application context file for endpoint configuration, refer to our Java First Spring Support sample. You can see how the web.xml deployment descriptor explicitly references the beans.xml application context file via a context-param element (and ContextLoaderListener object); also that the application context file manually imports the three cxf modules that it needs.

...

Enabling message logging using plain Spring bean elements

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd">

    <bean id="logInbound" class="org.apache.cxf.interceptor.LoggingInInterceptor"/>
    <bean id="logOutbound" class="org.apache.cxf.interceptor.LoggingOutInterceptor"/>
	
    <bean id="cxf" class="org.apache.cxf.bus.CXFBusImplspring.SpringBus">
        <property name="inInterceptors">
            <list>
                <ref bean="logInbound"/>
            </list>
        </property>
        <property name="outInterceptors">
            <list>
                <ref bean="logOutbound"/>
            </list>
        </property>
        <property name="outFaultInterceptors">
            <list>
                <ref bean="logOutbound"/>
            </list>
        </property>
        <property name="inFaultInterceptors">
            <list>
                <ref bean="logInbound"/>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean> 
</beans>

In this example, you specify that the CXF bus is implemented by class org.apache.cxf.bus.spring.CXFBusImplSpringBus, and that it's its id is "cxf". This is the default, but you have to re-iterate the fact if you want the bus to contribute the logging interceptors to the outbound and inbound interceptor chain for all client and server endpoints. You can avoid this duplication by using the next form of configuration:

Enabling message logging using custom CXF bean elements

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xmlns:cxf="http://cxf.apache.org/core"
      xsi:schemaLocation="
http://cxf.apache.org/core http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/core.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd">

    <bean id="logInbound" class="org.apache.cxf.interceptor.LoggingInInterceptor"/>
    <bean id="logOutbound" class="org.apache.cxf.interceptor.LoggingOutInterceptor"/>

    <cxf:bus>
        <cxf:inInterceptors>
            <ref bean="logInbound"/>
        </cxf:inInterceptors>
        <cxf:outInterceptors>
            <ref bean="logOutbound"/>
        </cxf:outInterceptors>
        <cxf:outFaultInterceptors>
            <ref bean="logOutbound"/>
        </cxf:outFaultInterceptors>
        <cxf:inFaultInterceptors>
            <ref bean="logOutboundlogInbound"/>
        </cxf:inFaultInterceptors>
    </cxf:bus> 
</beans>

Here, there is no need to specify the implementation class of the bus - nor the fact that the inInterceptors, outInterceptors, outFaultInterceptors, and inFaultInterceptors child elements are of type list. All of this information is embedded in the underlying schema and the bean definition parser that's invoked for <cxf:bus> elemens. Note that you have to specify the location of this schema in the schemaLocation attribute of the <beans> element so that Spring can validate the configuration file. But it gets even simpler in the next example:

Enabling message logging using the Logging feature

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xmlns:cxf="http://cxf.apache.org/core"
      xsi:schemaLocation="
http://cxf.apache.org/core http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/core.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd">

    <cxf:bus>
        <cxf:features>
            <cxf:logging/>
        </cxf:features>
    </cxf:bus> 
</beans>

...

For a list of available features, see here.

Advanced Configuration

If you are writing your own component for CXF, please see Configuration for Developers page.