SOAP web service requests

SOAP builds on the general XML-RPC web service concept and provides a richer, albeit more complex, means for transferring typed data. SOAP web services typically provide a Web Service Description Language file (WSDL) that specifies the web service calls, data types, and service URL. While ActionScript 3 does not provide direct support for SOAP, you can construct a SOAP XML message "by hand," post it to the server, and then parse the results. However, for anything except the simplest SOAP web service, you can probably save a significant amount of development time using an existing SOAP library.

The Flex framework includes libraries for accessing SOAP web services. In Flash Builder the library, rpc.swc, is automatically included in Flex projects, since it is part of the Flex framework. In Flash Professional, you can add the Flex framework.swc and rpc.swc to the library path of a project and then access the Flex classes with ActionScript.