OpenSAML user discussion

[Scott Cantor <>]

> Scott -- there really isn't any compile time options in Java 
> do what you want -- i.e. there's no preprocessor. What you 
> probably do is abstract out the functionality and use a 
> factory to get the implementation and then could test if the 
> method existed before calling it (Java's runtime class 
> manipulation can be a wonderful thing when used correctly :).

Yes, and it also duplicates methods all over the SPI and engine classes. ;-)

I obviously ran into that in several places, like with the signature 
provider, and simply didn't care enough back then to spend the
time defining SPI's all over the place. Obviously that's worth doing, but boy 
do I prefer abstract base classes.

JAXP really is the factory I should be able to use, but unfortunately it 
doesn't work very well in practice for non-trivial parsing
needs.

> However, I can't think of why Shannon would be restricted to 
> using whatever XML parser the app server used.

Yes, that's my assumption. Sometimes they make it tricky though. Tomcat 4 
only recently made it possible to use Xerces without
copying jars around.

-- Scott

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