Shibboleth Developers

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Title: Attribute Encoders on the IDP?

Should I be digging into the attribute encoders on the IDP?  In Shib 1.3, we had a custom connector that built a custom assertion as well as encoded it before it returned it to shibboleth as a string.  In 2.0, I thought we might return it from the connector as a more complex object and then either write a custom encoder or use an appropriate encoder.

I was perusing the source code as well as doing some experiments to see what would happen if I used the SAML2Base64AttributeEncoder that I found tucked down in the ShibCommon source code.  In my attribute-resolver.xml I specified to use that encoder, but something is going wrong (I don't see any errors logged on the IdP).  Testing with aacli the assertion value doesn't appear:

<saml:AttributeStatement xmlns:saml="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion">
   <saml:Attribute Name="principalName" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:unspecified">
      <saml:AttributeValue xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:type="xs:string">testUser</saml:AttributeValue>
   </saml:Attribute>
   <saml:Attribute Name="ATTRIBUTE_ID_1" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri"/>
</saml:AttributeStatement>

If I specify an attribute encoder of string, I get the following:

<saml:AttributeStatement xmlns:saml="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion">
   <saml:Attribute Name="principalName" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:unspecified">
      <saml:AttributeValue xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:type="xs:string">testUser</saml:AttributeValue>
   </saml:Attribute>
   <saml:Attribute Name="ATTRIBUTE_ID_1" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri">
      <saml:AttributeValue xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:type="xs:string">value1</saml:AttributeValue>
   </saml:Attribute>
</saml:AttributeStatement>


Thanks,
Jeff