Getting Raw XML From SOAPMessage in Java

You could try in this way.

SOAPMessage msg = messageContext.getMessage();
ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
msg.writeTo(out);
String strMsg = new String(out.toByteArray());

If you have a SOAPMessage or SOAPMessageContext, you can use a Transformer, by converting it to a Source via DOMSource:

            final SOAPMessage message = messageContext.getMessage();
            final StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();

            try {
                TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer().transform(
                    new DOMSource(message.getSOAPPart()),
                    new StreamResult(sw));
            } catch (TransformerException e) {
                throw new RuntimeException(e);
            }

            // Now you have the XML as a String:
            System.out.println(sw.toString());

This will take the encoding into account, so your "special characters" won't get mangled.

It turns out that one can get the raw XML by using Provider, in this way:

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import javax.xml.ws.Provider;
import javax.xml.ws.Service;
import javax.xml.ws.ServiceMode;
import javax.xml.ws.WebServiceProvider;

@ServiceMode(value=Service.Mode.PAYLOAD)
@WebServiceProvider()
public class SoapProvider implements Provider<Source>
{
    public Source invoke(Source msg)
    {
        StreamResult sr = new StreamResult();

        ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        sr.setOutputStream(out);

        try {
            Transformer trans = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
            trans.transform(msg, sr);

            // Use out to your heart's desire.
        }
        catch (TransformerException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }    

        return msg;
    }
}

I've ended up not needing this solution, so I haven't actually tried this code myself - it might need some tweaking to get right. But I know this is the right path to go down to get the raw XML from a web service.

(I'm not sure how to make this work if you absolutely must have a SOAPMessage object, but then again, if you're going to be handling the raw XML anyways, why would you use a higher-level object?)

for just debugging purpose, use one line code -

msg.writeTo(System.out);

Using Transformer Factory:-

public static String printSoapMessage(final SOAPMessage soapMessage) throws TransformerFactoryConfigurationError,
            TransformerConfigurationException, SOAPException, TransformerException
    {
        final TransformerFactory transformerFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        final Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();

        // Format it
        transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
        transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");

        final Source soapContent = soapMessage.getSOAPPart().getContent();

        final ByteArrayOutputStream streamOut = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        final StreamResult result = new StreamResult(streamOut);
        transformer.transform(soapContent, result);

        return streamOut.toString();
    }

If you need formatting the xml string to xml, try this:

String xmlStr = "your-xml-string";
Source xmlInput = new StreamSource(new StringReader(xmlStr));
Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
transformer.transform(xmlInput,
        new StreamResult(new FileOutputStream("response.xml")));

this works

 final StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();

try {
    TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer().transform(
        new DOMSource(soapResponse.getSOAPPart()),
        new StreamResult(sw));
} catch (TransformerException e) {
    throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
System.out.println(sw.toString());
return sw.toString();

if you have the client code then you just need to add the following two lines to get the XML request/response. Here _call is org.apache.axis.client.Call

String request = _call.getMessageContext().getRequestMessage().getSOAPPartAsString();
String response = _call.getMessageContext().getResponseMessage().getSOAPPartAsString();

It is pretty old thread but recently i had a similar issue. I was calling a downstream soap service, from a rest service, and I needed to return the xml response coming from the downstream server as is.

So, i ended up adding a SoapMessageContext handler to get the XML response. Then i injected the response xml into servlet context as an attribute.

public boolean handleMessage(SOAPMessageContext context) {

            // Get xml response
            try {

                ServletContext servletContext =
                        ((ServletRequestAttributes) RequestContextHolder.getRequestAttributes()).getRequest().getServletContext();

                SOAPMessage msg = context.getMessage();

                ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
                msg.writeTo(out);
                String strMsg = new String(out.toByteArray());

                servletContext.setAttribute("responseXml", strMsg);

                return true;
            } catch (Exception e) {
                return false;
            }
        }

Then I have retrieved the xml response string in the service layer.

ServletContext servletContext =
                ((ServletRequestAttributes) RequestContextHolder.getRequestAttributes()).getRequest().getServletContext();

        String msg = (String) servletContext.getAttribute("responseXml");

Didn't have chance to test it yet but this approach must be thread safe since it is using the servlet context.