JAX-WS supports a "pluggable encoding" - meaning it can use formats other than textual XML. This extension takes advantage of this and allows JAX-WS services to be exposed via JSON.

JSON support is implemented as a custom binding. So just like there are SOAP/HTTP binding or Plain Old XML binding, you can specify JSON binding to expose a service as JSON service. The following code shows one way of exposing a service over JSON:

@BindingType(JSONBindingID.JSON_BINDING)
public class MyService {

    public Book get(@WebParam(name="id") int id) {
        Book b = new Book();
        b.id = id;
        return b;
    }

    public static final class Book {
        public int id = 1;
        public String title = "Java";
    }

}
					

You just need jaxws-json.jar in your WEB-INF/lib for this to work.

Client-side Programming

Once the server exposes a JSON service, you'll write client-side JavaScript to access this service. First, you'll include the proxy script.

<script src="path/to/endpoint?js"></script>
					
					

This creates a variable 'myService' with which you can make service invocations. All the parameters are passed as a single JavaScript object, where the property name is the parameter name. The call happens asynchronously, and when it's done your callback will be invoked with the return value as a parameter:

myService.get(
  {id:5},
  function(r) {
    alert("ID="+r.id);
    alert("title="+r.title);
  }
);
					

If you'd like to use a different variable name, specify that as the var query parameter, as shown below:

<script src="path/to/endpoint?js&var=svc"></script>
					
					

For client-side development, JSON endpoints serve HTML documentations on the fly, including all the available operations and "type descriptions" for all parameters and return values.