Provides HTTP SPI that is used for portable deployment of JAX-WS web services in containers(for e.g. servlet containers). This SPI is not for end developers but provides a way for the container developers to deploy JAX-WS services portably.

The portable deployment is done as below:

1. Container creates Endpoint objects for an application. The necessary information to create Endpoint objects may be got from web service deployment descriptor files.
2. Container needs to create HttpContext objects for the deployment. For example, a HttpContext could be created using servlet configuration(for e.g url-pattern) for the web service in servlet container case.
3. Then publishes all the endpoints using Endpoint.publish(HttpContext). During publish(), JAX-WS runtime registers a HttpHandler callback to handle incoming requests or HttpExchange objects. The HttpExchange object encapsulates a HTTP request and a response.

  Container                               JAX-WS runtime
  ---------                               --------------
  1. Creates Invoker1, ... InvokerN
  2. Provider.createEndpoint(...)     --> 3. creates Endpoint1
     configures Endpoint1
     ...
  4. Provider.createEndpoint(...)     --> 5. creates EndpointN
     configures EndpointN
  6. Creates ApplicationContext
  7. creates HttpContext1, ... HttpContextN
  8. Endpoint1.publish(HttpContext1)  --> 9. creates HttpHandler1
                                          HttpContext1.setHandler(HttpHandler1)
     ...
 10. EndpointN.publish(HttpContextN)  --> 11. creates HttpHandlerN
                                         HttpContextN.setHandler(HttpHandlerN)

  

The request processing is done as below(for every request):

  Container                               JAX-WS runtime
  ---------                               --------------
  1. Creates a HttpExchange
  2. Gets handler from HttpContext
  3. HttpHandler.handle(HttpExchange) --> 4. reads request from HttpExchange
                                      <-- 5. Calls Invoker
  6. Invokes the actual instance
                                          7. Writes the response to HttpExchange
  

The portable undeployment is done as below:

  Container
  ---------
  1. @preDestroy on instances
  2. Endpoint1.stop()
  ...
  3. EndpointN.stop()