Content-Length header already present

I've not used HttpClient myself, but I suspect that the problem is that putMethod.setEntity(...) is implicitly supplying a content length and you are also setting it explicitly via one of the putMethod.addHeader(...) calls.

As pointed out by igor.zh, this problem can occur if using Spring's HttpComponentsMessageSender class. To be more precise though, this is only a problem if you are passing your own instance of HttpClient into the HttpComponentsMessageSender constructor - the issue is handled automatically otherwise.

As of spring-ws 2.1.4, the HttpComponentsMessageSender.RemoveSoapHeadersInterceptor subclass that is used in the default constructor was made public to address this issue (see https://jira.spring.io/browse/SWS-835) and so can be used in your own HttpClient instances instead of writing your own class to do it. It also clears the HTTP.TRANSFER_ENCODING header.

Use the HttpClientBuilder.addInterceptorFirst method to inject this interceptor into your own HttpClient instance. Example below using XML bean wiring. If anybody knows a more concise way of constructing the HttpClient instance (aside from writing a factory bean class), I'm all ears!

<bean id="httpClientBuilder" class="org.apache.http.impl.client.HttpClientBuilder" factory-method="create"/>

<bean id="interceptedHttpClientBuilder" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
    <property name="targetObject" ref="httpClientBuilder" />
    <property name="targetMethod" value="addInterceptorFirst"> </property>
    <property name="arguments">
        <list>
            <bean class="org.springframework.ws.transport.http.HttpComponentsMessageSender.RemoveSoapHeadersInterceptor"/>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="httpClient" factory-bean="interceptedHttpClientBuilder" factory-method="build" />

<bean id="webServiceTemplate" class="org.springframework.ws.client.core.WebServiceTemplate">
    <constructor-arg ref="messageFactory"/>
    <property name="messageSender">
        <bean class="org.springframework.ws.transport.http.HttpComponentsMessageSender">
            <property name="httpClient" ref="httpClient"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

Alternatively, if you can, just allow HttpComponentsMessageSender to construct its own HttpClient instance rather than passing one to it. Minor note on this: as of spring-ws 2.2.0-RELEASE, the default constructor for HttpComponentsMessageSender continues to use the DefaultHttpClient class, which is now deprecated. Hopefully this will be addressed in a future release.