One thing you might want to consider is combining any such helper class with a BeanInfo class that users might have already created for their beans. Having 2 classes that contain metadata about a bean isn't as clean as 1. -Dug
R J Scheuerle Jr/Austin/IBM@IBMUS on 03/11/2002 05:14:50 PM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Subject: Bean Class/Bean Class Helper Generation There have been several recent changes to the Bean Class generation to support more advanced xml features...namely attributes. I applaud the new functionality, but we need to step back and consider a more flexible architectural direction. I would like to see all of the meta data information removed from the java bean class and placed in a Helper class that extends a Helper interface. Here is a first pass at the Helper interface: interface Helper { public org.apache.axis.description.TypeDesc getTypeDesc(); public org.apache.axis.encoding.Serializer getSerializerAs(String mechanismType); public org.apache.axis.encoding.Deserializer getDeserializerAs(String mechanismType); } The generated bean class should contain ONLY the getters/setters describing the bean (and perhaps the equals() method...which needs some work). This would adequately decouple the logical bean from the serialization/deserialization of the bean. The BeanSerializerFactory/BeanDeserializerFactory could be tweaked to always look for a corresponding Helper class to find the meta data or find the custom serializer/deserializer. The generic serializer/deserializer classes should use default behaviour if the helper class is not available. (In fact I am in favor of having separate meta data aware serializers/deserializers.) Separating the bean and the bean helper would allow users to provide custom Helper emitters to add custom serializers etc. Please comment. Rich Scheuerle XML & Web Services Development 512-838-5115 (IBM TL 678-5115)