A representation of the SOAP header element. A SOAP header element consists of XML data that affects the way the application-specific content is processed by the message provider. For example, transaction semantics, authentication information, and so on, can be specified as the content of a SOAPHeader object.

A SOAPEnvelope object contains an empty SOAPHeader object by default. If the SOAPHeader object, which is optional, is not needed, it can be retrieved and deleted with the following line of code. The variable se is a SOAPEnvelope object.

      se.getHeader().detachNode();
 

A SOAPHeader object is created with the SOAPEnvelope method addHeader. This method, which creates a new header and adds it to the envelope, may be called only after the existing header has been removed.

      se.getHeader().detachNode();
      SOAPHeader sh = se.addHeader();
 

A SOAPHeader object can have only SOAPHeaderElement objects as its immediate children. The method addHeaderElement creates a new HeaderElement object and adds it to the SOAPHeader object. In the following line of code, the argument to the method addHeaderElement is a Name object that is the name for the new HeaderElement object.

      SOAPHeaderElement shElement = sh.addHeaderElement(name);