OpenSAML user discussion

["Gitesh Malik" <>]

I am working with openSAML 1.0. We have a requirement of carrying around a ‘reference handle’ in the assertion. From what I have heard from other developers it is not possible to insert extra nodes within the assertion xml as this leads to the assertion xml not being validated by opensaml (as I hear, its possible with the next version of opensaml). Therefore I am planning to inject the handle as a Comment node in the xml. Therefore assertion is created in the way –

 

SAMLAssertion assn = new SAMLAssertion((Element)assertionNode); //assertionNode has a comment set in. it may be arbitrarily big

 

However when assertion.toString() is called to retrieve the assertion – the underlying comment is no longer available in the returned xml string. So it seems that I would have to carry the assertion externally for the purpose and not rely on assertion.toString() to retrieve the ‘reference handle’. Javadocs and documentation on the web do not indicate any way to change the toString() behaviors through some passed in config param either.

 

I can take care of the issue by marinating external assertion. However this is definitely not the cleanest way. Wonder if any one else has ever come across this issue and handled it in more graceful way.

 

Thanks,

 

-gitesh