Skip to main content

Search 412 pages — tools, formats, elements, namespaces, directory, comparisons, XPath, datatypes, glossary, parse errors, schema errors, use cases, guides, blog and product.

SOAP envelope

<env:Header>

The optional SOAP container for routing, security, tracing, transactions, and other processing metadata.

Header carries extensible blocks from application namespaces. SOAP attributes such as mustUnderstand and role tell nodes which blocks they must process.

Each immediate child is a header block with processing semantics, not an arbitrary metadata field, and Header must appear before Body.

Format
SOAP envelope
Namespace
SOAP 1.2 envelope
Parent
<env:Envelope>
How many
Zero or one, before Body.

What it contains

  • application header blocksany numberNormally namespace-qualified.

Cardinality and constraints

Zero or one, before Body.

  • May contain namespace-qualified header blocks.
  • Cannot follow the Body element.

What our validator does

The XML validator checks well-formedness and selected SOAP or XML Schema vocabulary rules. It reports this content-model defect with a concrete repair while staying silent on rules it cannot establish from one document.

Broken and fixed

Both documents below are well-formed XML — that is the point of this corpus — and both are run through the validator on every test run. The verdicts here are what it returned, not what we expect it to.

broken
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
  <env:Body><m:getPrice xmlns:m="urn:example:catalog"><m:sku>42</m:sku></m:getPrice></env:Body>
  <env:Header><m:trace xmlns:m="urn:example:meta">abc-123</m:trace></env:Header>
</env:Envelope>
SOAP Header must appear before Body.
fixed
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
  <env:Header><m:trace xmlns:m="urn:example:meta">abc-123</m:trace></env:Header>
  <env:Body><m:getPrice xmlns:m="urn:example:catalog"><m:sku>42</m:sku></m:getPrice></env:Body>
</env:Envelope>
No errors. Warnings may remain — a conforming feed can still be missing a self link — but nothing here is wrong.

Where it reaches

Related elements

All 49 elements

Get started

Bring order to the XML your team can't afford to ignore.

Create a free account and get a private workspace to search, validate, diff, and monitor your XML feeds, sitemaps, schemas, and vendor integrations.

Get started freeSign in