OpenSAML user discussion

[Jay Packard <>]

Chad La Joie wrote:
> Jay Packard wrote:
> > According to 
> > http://svn.middleware.georgetown.edu/view/java-xmltooling/branches/1.0sig/src/org/opensaml/xml/io/Marshaller.java?revision=118&view=markup&pathrev=126, 
> > the marshall and unmarshall methods are not static.  Don't I have to 
> > use a marshalling/unmarshalling factory?
>
> Again, here is the documentation on unmarshalling
> https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/OpenSAML/OSTwoUserManual
>
> And here is the documentation on marshalling:
> https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/OpenSAML/OSTwoUsrManJavaWriteToXML
Is the source I found out of date?  The examples from your links don't 
disagree.  They also use a marshalling/unmarshalling factory rather than 
a static function.
> > Also, the marshaller returns an org.w3c.dom.Element object.  Can I 
> > simply cast this to an java.io.Serializable class (which is returned 
> > by the method in my port type stub)?
>
> This is an incredibly basic Java question and not appropriate for this 
> list.  If you need to know if Element is serializable go look at the 
> Javadoc for it.
What makes you think I hadn't looked at the Javadocs?  I did and saw 
that Element is an interface so it is not inherently serializable.  
Whether the object returned by the marshall method is serializable or 
not, and hence can be cast to a Serializable object, depends on 
opensaml's implementation of Element, which I can't know from the API 
definition. 

Without asking it directly, I was really just trying to understand from 
your experience the way the Element object is typically returned in a 
web service, not for you to explain something basic like the way casting 
works.