About Handlers

See Also 

A handler is a Java class that provides a filtering mechanism for preprocessing and postprocessing the web service message, by intercepting it and acting on the request or response. Handlers can be used on the client side, server side, or both. Handlers can be used to add features to a service call and are a good means to layer additional functionality over the core message. They are useful because they provide the ability to introduce security services, business processing, and error handling. They also permit managing the selection of content creation strategies in both service consumers and service implementations without changing client or server code.

Typical uses of handlers include:

There are two types of handlers: message handlers and logical handlers. These are the differences between them.

Message Handlers Logical Handlers
SOAP over HTTP or XML over HTTP. Protocol agnostic and cannot change any protocol specific parts (like headers) of a message.
If you are using SOAP over HTTP, the contents of the SOAP Body forms the payload. If you are using XML over HTTP, the XML content of the primary part of the message becomes the payload. Only acts on the payload and the context of the message.
See Also
About Web Services
Configuring a Handler
Creating a Handler
Testing and Using a Handler

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