Web Service Development Guide : PART IV Extending your Applications : Chapter 11 Custom Transports and Listeners : Using an Autoconfigured Listener
Using an Autoconfigured Listener
You may choose to autoconfigure your HTTP and HTTPS listener. Autoconfiguration may be useful for several reasons -- for instance, to avoid binding a listener to a port already in use, or to allow your service to be moved to a different machine without having to revise the configuration files.
Once the listener has been bound to a local address (in the rwsf::MessageListener::start() method), the “bound-host”, “bound-ip”, and “bound-port” properties are set to the host name, ip address, and port of the address. For example, let’s look at the generated client configuration file client-transports.xml for HTTP.
 
<rwsf:listener name="HTTP"
uri="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/listener/http" scheme="http"
default="true" class="rwsf_webservice.createHttpMessageListener">
<rwsf:property name="auto-start" value="false"/>
<!-- When host and port listener properties are absent,
they will be auto-configured to the machine’s host name
and first available port. The machine will need to be
configured for lookup on the network under its host name. -->
<rwsf:property name="host" value="localhost"/>
<!-- <rwsf:property name="port" value="9000"/> -->
<rwsf:property name="request-backlog" value="5"/>
<rwsf:property name="request-timeout" value="60000"/>
<rwsf:property name="request-buffersize" value="4096"/>
<rwsf:property name="keep-alive" value="true"/>
</rwsf:listener>
Note that the “port” property is commented out, allowing the listener location to be dynamically assigned. If you do not want a dynamic assignment, uncomment this property and enter a value.
Another way to implement auto-assignment is to comment out the host property. In other words, your applications could have a fixed host with an automatically-assigned port, or a fixed port, with an automatically-assigned host.
(The bound-host, bound-port, and bound-ip properties will also reflect these values.)
It is easy to use an auto-configured listener in your applications. Following are some excerpts from WeatherSummaryClient.cpp, the provided sample implementation in the WeatherSummary example implementing listener auto-configuration. (This example is located in your <installdir>\examples\webservices\WeatherSummary directory.)
Before accessing the autoconfigured properties, first set up and start a listener:
 
#include <rwsf/webservice/listener/MessageListener.h> //1
 
 
rwsf::MessageHandler service =
rwsf::HandlerManager::findHandler("WeatherSummaryNotificationService"); //2
 
rwsf::MessageListener listener; //3
if (transportName.empty()) {
listener = rwsf::TransportManager::findListenerByUrl(location);
} else {
listener = rwsf::TransportManager::findListener(transportName);
 
if (listener.isValid()) { //4
std::cout << "Starting Listener..." << std::endl << std::endl;
listener.setHandler(service); //5
listener.start(); //6
}
else {
std::cerr << "Unable to find a listener of name: " << transportName << std::endl;
std::cerr << "Exiting." << std::endl;
return 1;
}
//1 Necessary include.
//2 Gets the service, defined in the client-handler.xml file as this example uses a notification message pattern.
//3 Creates an instance of the listener either by name or by location, i.e. URL.
//4 Tests that the listener has been found and created properly.
//5 The setHandler() method is used to set the service that will handle a message. The service is loaded from client-handlers.xml by rwsf::HandlerManager, and retrieved by name, in line //2.
//6 Starts the listener.
Once the listener is started, it can get its auto-configured properties, and invoke the subscribe operation with the values:
 
...
 
std::cout << "Subscribing to WeatherSummary service..." << std::endl;
std::string host = listener.getProperty("bound-ip");
std::string port = listener.getProperty("bound-port");
std::string scheme = listener.getProperty("name");
bool status;
std::string msg;
proxy.subscribe(host, port, scheme, status, msg);
...
Note the call listener.getProperty(“bound-ip”) and listener.getProperty("bound-port"). These calls return the auto-configured values for the IP address and the port.