Problem

Created a JAX-WS handler to inject a mac address into the client side SOAP request header automatically :

File : MacAddressInjectHandler.java

public class MacAddressInjectHandler implements SOAPHandler<SOAPMessageContext>{
 
   @Override
   public boolean handleMessage(SOAPMessageContext context) {
 
	//......
	//get mac address
	String mac = getMACAddress();
 
	//add a soap header, name as "mac address"
	QName qname = new QName("http://ws.ziben.com.br/", "mac address");
	SOAPHeaderElement soapHeaderElement = soapHeader.addHeaderElement(qname);
 
	soapHeaderElement.setActor(SOAPConstants.URI_SOAP_ACTOR_NEXT);
	soapHeaderElement.addTextNode(mac);
	soapMsg.saveChanges();
        //......
   }
   //......
}

When SOAP message is generated and sent to service’s provider (or server), it return the following error message immediately :

com.sun.xml.internal.ws.streaming.XMLStreamReaderException: 
   XML reader error: javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamException: ParseError at [row,col]:[1,110]
   Message: Attribute name "address" associated with 
   an element type "mac" must be followed by the ' = ' character.
   //...
Caused by: javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamException: ParseError at [row,col]:[1,110]
   Message: Attribute name "address" associated with an element type 
   "mac" must be followed by the ' = ' character.
   //...

Solution

The XMLStreamException is saying that you’re trying to send an invalid SOAP message that contains invalid format. From SOAP client above, you may generate similar SOAP message as following :

<S:Envelope xmlns:S="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <S:Header>
	<mac address xmlns="http://ws.ziben.com.br/" 
		xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" 
		SOAP-ENV:actor="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/actor/next">
			90-4C-E5-44-B9-8F
	</mac address>
  </S:Header>
  <S:Body>
	<ns2:getServerName xmlns:ns2="http://ws.ziben.com.br/"/>
  </S:Body>
</S:Envelop

And notice the “mac address” attribute? The “space” in between is causing the “address” became an attribute for “mac” element.

To fix it, just delete the spaces like this :

QName qname = new QName("http://ws.ziben.com.br/", "macaddress");