OpenSAML user discussion

[Brent Putman <>]

No, agreed, I wasn't proposing we change it now (too close before 2.0), 
just presenting what seems to me to be the most straightforward approach.


Chad La Joie wrote:
> We are not changing the API at this point.
>
> Brent Putman wrote:
> > Unless Chad has a better idea, I think the only workable way is to in 
> > fact put in on XMLObject, with the other xsi attributes.  Of course, 
> > only those which are actually nillable could ever set it to true 
> > without causing schema violation, but we don't strictly prevent 
> > people from shooting themselves in the foot anyway.
> >
> > So I'd propose:
> > 1) put isNil/setNil on XMLObject, defaulting to false
> > 2) marshaller only expresses it on the marshalled element if it's true
> > 3) unmarshaller would unconditionally set it if it's present on the 
> > element, and hope that it is in fact valid for the element being 
> > unmarshalled.  Don't know what else you could do.  If schema 
> > compliance is really important, then I suppose you just have to 
> > schema validate when parsing.
> >
> > If we want to be really anal and provide a safety net mechanism to 
> > prevent people from inadvertently doing the bad thing when creating 
> > objects, then we could also:
> > 4) add an isNillable/setNillable to XMLObject, defaulting to false
> > 5) implement setNil so that if isNillable is false, throws an illegal 
> > argument exception or something
> > 6) actual defined elements/types (i.e. that are not anyType cases) 
> > which are nillable could just set to true in the constructor, etc
> > 7) anyType cases like AttributeValue would just set to true 
> > externally, on construction, perhaps in the builder if a custom 
> > builder is used.