Answer to the question: Howto use KSoap with SSL in J2SE the easy way.

I found it this morning, so I will share this with the mailing list :)
I reckon with an aftertought that everything about this is trivial, but
this information is well hidden inside the Java platform (and no first 
page link on Google reckon this), so that it may be difficult to find 
out (I only found out it by accident, and I was pondering to rewrite the 
HttpTransportSE class).

If you have J2SE 1.4+, the Java Secure Socket Extension already allows 
you to use HTTPS without calling a different

Instead of calling HttpTransportSE with a normal http url call it with 
an https url.

So if you call "http://mysoapserver.com/soapservlet", call instead (for 
example) "https://mysoapserver.com:8443/soapservlet".

I tested this on Tomcat 5, with a standard SSL config (I only gave a 
different keystore path and password), and the client jar was signed 
with a key from the same keystore. The client jar is then downloaded via 
Java Webstart, j2se/java webstart will allow you to connect to the 
server without any problem.

See:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/security/jsse/JSSERefGuide.html#HTTPSSample
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/security/jsse/JSSERefGuide.html
for further information on jsse, and

http://ksoap.enhydra.org/software/downloads/addon/HttpTransportSE.java
for the HttpTransportSE class (present both in ksoap-j2ee and ksoap-j2se 
jars).

Please, blog this, link this post either on GMane or on the Enhydra 
website archives and spread the love for KSoap :)

-- 
Davide Inglima - limaCAT
mailto:[email protected]