So you want to spurn SOAP4r and http-access2 and espouse Ruby's builtin Net::HTTP class? But yes, it is strange how headers such as SOAPAction get munged into Soapaction and rejected by many SOAP toolkits. Don't spill yer chunky-bacon, try my quick and dirty work-round:

require 'rubygems'
require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
require 'builder'

endpoint = 'http://localhost:10080/'
soap = 'http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/'
service =  'http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/databinding/examples/6/05/'
operation = "echoStringElement"

xml = Builder::XmlMarkup.new
xml.Envelope :xmlns => soap do
  xml.Body do
     xml.tag! operation, 'Be like the squirrel!', :xmlns => service
  end
end

module Net
  module HTTPHeader
    def canonical( k )
      return "SOAPAction" if k == 'soapaction'
      k.split(/-/).map {|i| i.capitalize }.join('-')
    end
  end
end

uri = URI.parse(endpoint)
http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
#http.set_debug_output $stderr

req_headers= {
  'Content-Type' => 'text/xml; charset=utf-8',
  'SOAPAction' => '"' + service + '#' + operation + '"',
}

req_body = xml.target!
response = http.request_post(uri.path, req_body, req_headers)
puts response.body

Note I followed Sam's example and used XML::Builder to make the SOAP message. I now anticipate bile and vitriol from the apparently friendly, inclusive Ruby community :-)

Technorati Tags: HTTP, Ruby, SOAP, Web Services