Difference between “SOAPAction:” and “SOAPAction” HTTP request property

Question

I was checking how to perform SOAP calls without using any library like jax-ws, just using a normal HttpURLConnection. When reading documentation I found in some places

conn.setRequestProperty("SOAPAction", soapAction);

And in other places

conn.setRequestProperty("SOAPAction:", soapAction);

But I couldn't find the difference between these two headers. Well, I found one, when using "SOAPAction:", if the action was misspelled, the ":" was like part of the name of the action.

Does someone know the difference? Or is "SOAPAction:" simply wrong?

Answer 1

SOAPAction: is wrong. HTTP adds the colon. A colon isn't allowed in a header name, in fact.