ur-type with JAX-RPC or XSLT-ing the response via a Handler

Question

So we've got ourselves a lovely vintage PHP WS we must integrate via JAX-RPC and this WS delivers some responses as follows:

 <return SOAP-ENC:arrayType="SOAP-ENC:Array[1]" xsi:type="SOAP-ENC:Array">
    <item SOAP-ENC:arrayType="xsd:ur-type[3]" xsi:type="SOAP-ENC:Array">
       <item xsi:type="xsd:string">...</item>
       <item xsi:type="xsd:float">...</item>
       <item xsi:type="xsd:int">...</item>
    </item>
 </return>

Now the problem is, JAX-RPC doesn't seem to know about ur-type

We thought about using a Handler for doing a search and replace on the the responses' XML or transforming it via XSLT so that ur-type => anyType but we can't seem to figure it out how to do it. Specifically what OutputStream / StreamResult could we use for the transformation?

Any other suggestion is more than welcomed :)

I think "ur-type" was the name used for xs:anyType in some early internal draft of XML Schema. I didn't know it had found its way into products. But your real question seems to be 'how do I run XSLT transformations in our particular processing environment' - which I can't answer as it's not my area. — Michael Kay, Nov 02 '11 at 22:24
Thanks Michael. The real question is more along the line: how can we change `ur-type` into `anyType` at a basic level before the response gets deserialized, if there is no way of supporting `ur-type` directly. Specifically, we use JAX-RPC 1.1 and we thought we could replace `ur-type` from within a +Handler.handleResponse(). — Marius Burz, Nov 02 '11 at 23:08

Marius Burz · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-18T11:13:36.003

So if the end we gave up with our idea of using a XSLT or doing a search and replace on the raw XML.

We're using SOAPBody to manipulate the responses' DOM and replace ur-type with anyType and everything works out just fine. Nonetheless, if you have any better idea, please do post it.

Edit: here's how we basically did it.

This goes in the class where you get the port, you need to register the handler where you do your search and replace:

private TestSOAPPort getPort() {
    TestSOAPService service = new TestSOAPServiceImpl();
    try {
        registerResponseHandler(service);
        TestSOAPPort port = service.getTestSOAPPort();
        ((TestSOAPPortStub) port)._setProperty(javax.xml.rpc.Stub.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY, TestConstants.ENDPOINT_URL);
        return port;
    } catch (Exception e) {
        // ...
    }

    return null;
}

private void registerResponseHandler(TestSOAPService service) {
    HandlerRegistry hr = service.getHandlerRegistry();
    QName portName = new QName(TestConstants.NAMESPACE_URI, TestConstants.PORT_NAME);
    List handlerChain = hr.getHandlerChain(portName);
    HandlerInfo hi = new HandlerInfo();
    hi.setHandlerClass(TestResponseHandler.class);
    handlerChain.add(hi);
}

And this is how the handler looks like:

import javax.xml.rpc.handler.GenericHandler;

public class TestResponseHandler extends GenericHandler {
    private static final String XSD_UR_TYPE = "xsd:ur-type";
    private static final String XSD_ANY_TYPE = "xsd:anyType";
    private static final String XSD_INT_ARRAY = "xsd:int[";
    private static final String XSD_ANY_TYPE_ARRAY = "xsd:anyType[";

    @Override
    public boolean handleResponse(MessageContext context) {
        SOAPMessageContext smc = (SOAPMessageContext) context;
        SOAPMessage sm = smc.getMessage();
        try {
            SOAPBody sb = sm.getSOAPBody();
            handleNodes(sb.getElementsByTagName("problemTag"));
            sm.saveChanges();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            // ...
        }

        return super.handleResponse(context);
    }

    private void handleNodes(NodeList nodes) {
        // do your search and replace here
        if (nodes == null) {
            return;
        }
        for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
            Node node = nodes.item(i);
            NamedNodeMap attributes = node.getAttributes();
            for (int j = 0; j < attributes.getLength(); j++) {
                Node attribute = attributes.item(j);
                if (attribute.getNodeValue().startsWith(XSD_UR_TYPE)) {
                    attribute.setNodeValue(attribute.getNodeValue().replace(XSD_UR_TYPE, XSD_ANY_TYPE));
                } else if (attribute.getNodeValue().startsWith(XSD_INT_ARRAY)) {
                    attribute.setNodeValue(attribute.getNodeValue().replace(XSD_INT_ARRAY, XSD_ANY_TYPE_ARRAY));
                }
            }
        }
    }

}

I am facing the exact same problem. can you put few lines explaining how how you did that? how were you able to do the replacement before it got deserialized? — , Apr 18 '13 at 10:35
+1 I can't thank you enough!!!! This was more than I hoped for. I needed a direction and instead got a fully working implementation. I copied it and modified it and it works perfectly. Thanks again for your generosity. Thank you Thank you Thank you :) — , Apr 18 '13 at 11:49

ur-type with JAX-RPC or XSLT-ing the response via a Handler

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