Documentation for SOAP API. Is it necessary, and is the objection that WSDL is sufficient fair?

Question

PHP

Good evening Toaster users.
I would like to hear your views on the situation described below.
There is company A - a business, company B - developers of databases for business and applications for business cashiers, company C - a website developer for company A, which must receive the contents of the database that the business is currently using.
I am a programmer, freelancer, I work with company B and do all the programming of the site. And the site should upload the contents of the database that company B is developing. The programmers of company B had to write an API to communicate between our two systems.
2 weeks after the deadline, they made an API, but without documentation. Company B's manager said that the WSDL should be enough to understand. I disagreed and asked for at least a code example. Then it turned into an argument.
A bit of the essence of the API: 2 requests for data. The second one has 3 parameters: shopID (the essence is clear from the name, we get the value from the first request), date and a boolean parameter. I didn't manage to guess with the second parameters. Yes, after 6 hours of negotiations, I received a piece of code and a joke from the manager due to the fact that I could not guess the parameters.
After the discussion continued:
>>> Documentation is being written for the API.
can't you find SOAP documentation? I don’t understand why you demand from me something that is freely available and was not developed by us.
No, in principle, if I could do my job, then I would not take a steam bath and write this text. It's just that the API turned out to be defective in the end and we still have to work together. Actually the question is, is the objection from the manager of company B above adequate, or should I have received the documentation?
PS: wrongly assuming the values ​​of the parameters (name=dt type=xs:dateTime and name=firstTime type=xs:boolean) I did not get the expected result

Answer 1

Well, usually a parser is set on wsdl that builds client classes. Technically, this allows you to already communicate with the service. But all the same, this may not be enough - you need to know what function is needed for what. WSDL is still not documentation, but just a description, metadata.

Answer 2

WSDL is enough, code is generated from it, it has everything in general, everything you need to work with the API. Documentation is needed only if you have a lot of methods and they all do some complicated things that are not obvious from the names.

Answer 3

WSDL is enough to understand the dialog.
For debugging use XMLSpy

Answer 4

WSDL is enough IMHO.
PS ShopId is not POISON - is it))

Answer 5

You can use SoapUI, it allows you to generate documentation for a wsdl file. Quite convenient if there is a lot of code.

Answer 6

I'm wondering what the TK was for those who created the API?
IMHO: TK + WSDL - already 85% of the documentation.

WSDL is enough IMHO.

Well it if WSDL normal.