You can achieve it by creating key-value map of child elements as well:
final Map<String, String> elements = new HashMap<>();
elements.put("username", "username");
elements.put("password", "password");
Set up namespace and prefix of your child element within the soap header:
final String LOCAL_NAME = "credentials";
final String PREFIX = "";
final String NAMESPACE = "http://example.com/auth";
Then, you can invoke WebServiceTemplate's method marshalSendAndReceive
where you override WebServiceMessageCallback's method doWithMessage as follows:
Object response = getWebServiceTemplate().marshalSendAndReceive(request, (message) -> {
if (message instanceof SaajSoapMessage) {
SaajSoapMessage saajSoapMessage = (SaajSoapMessage) message;
SOAPMessage soapMessage = saajSoapMessage.getSaajMessage();
SOAPPart soapPart = soapMessage.getSOAPPart();
if (Objects.nonNull(elements)) {
try {
SOAPEnvelope soapEnvelope = soapPart.getEnvelope();
SOAPHeader soapHeader = soapEnvelope.getHeader();
Name headerElementName = soapEnvelope.createName(
LOCAL_NAME,
PREFIX,
NAMESPACE
);
SOAPHeaderElement soapHeaderElement = soapHeader.addHeaderElement(headerElementName);
elements.forEach((key, value) -> {
try {
SOAPElement element = soapHeaderElement.addChildElement(key, PREFIX);
element.addTextNode(value);
} catch (SOAPException e) {
// error handling
}
});
soapMessage.saveChanges();
} catch (SOAPException e) {
// error handling
}
}
}
});
The above steps result in:
<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
<env:Header>
<credentials xmlns="http://example.com/auth">
<password>password</password>
<username>username</username>
</credentials>
</env:Header>
<env:Body>
<!-- your payload -->
</env:Body>
</env:Envelope>