Alistair’s cakeBlog

When saving from XMLBeans and using XmlOptions to pretty print, I kept getting a strange problem with the namespaces. The root node was ok as I was using XmlOptions.xmlOptions.setUseDefaultNamespace() but lower down the tree, the namespace prefixes weren’t coming out correctly. Instead of “saml” I was getting “urn”:

<urn:NameIdentifier xmlns:urn=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:assertion”>testID</saml:NameIdentifier>

With some help from the XMLBeans list, I’d overlooked XmlOptions.setSaveSuggestedPrefixes(Map). So bunging in the prefixes I wanted to save:

HashMap ns = new HashMap();
ns.put(“urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:protocol”, “samlp”);
ns.put(“urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:assertion”, “saml”);
ns.put(“http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#”, “ds”);
xmlOptions.setSaveSuggestedPrefixes(ns);

sorted the problem:

<saml:NameIdentifier>testID</saml:NameIdentifier>

Summary of XmlOptions namespace handling

With no namespace processing in XmlOptions, the output of save() is:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urn:Request xmlns:urn=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:protocol”>
  <urn:AttributeQuery>
    <urn1:Subject xmlns:urn1=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:assertion”>
      <urn1:NameIdentifier>testID</urn1:NameIdentifier>
    </urn1:Subject>
  </urn:AttributeQuery>
</urn:Request>

Using XmlOptions.setUseDefaultNamespace() you get:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<Request xmlns=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:protocol”>
  <AttributeQuery>
    <urn:Subject xmlns:urn=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:assertion”>
      <urn:NameIdentifier>testID</urn:NameIdentifier>
    </urn:Subject>
  </AttributeQuery>
</Request>

Telling XmlOptions which namespace prefixes to use gives you explicit prefixing:

HashMap ns = new HashMap();
ns.put(“urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:protocol”, “samlp”);
ns.put(“urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:assertion”, “saml”);
ns.put(“http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#”, “ds”);
xmlOptions.setSaveSuggestedPrefixes(ns);

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<samlp:Request xmlns:samlp=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:protocol”>
  <samlp:AttributeQuery>
    <saml:Subject xmlns:saml=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:assertion”>
      <saml:NameIdentifier>testID</saml:NameIdentifier>
    </saml:Subject>
  </samlp:AttributeQuery>
</samlp:Request>

Now, combine XmlOptions.setSaveSuggestedPrefixes() with XmlOptions.setSaveAggresiveNamespaces() and you get a tidy output:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<samlp:Request xmlns:samlp=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:protocol” xmlns:saml=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:assertion”>
  <samlp:AttributeQuery>
    <saml:Subject>
      <saml:NameIdentifier>testID</saml:NameIdentifier>
    </saml:Subject>
  </samlp:AttributeQuery>
</samlp:Request>