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Right. Sorry for so many words. But
that's the bottom line. It's generally not hard to do.
tc
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 4:04
PM
Subject: Re: Vectors in JavaBeans
So if I read this right, your
solution is to (re)write the interface to used a typed array?
The problem is not so much the mapping of vector. At least,
it is possible to map it to soap and back to java. Also there is a
mapping to/from c#. It uses object [] to map to this. I've
attached some sample files. The original service is in
CustomerServicex.java. I've cleaned this up from some real code I
have so don't worry if there are minor compile errors or the class name
doesn't match the file name. The CustomerService class defines my
web service. One of the methods is getContactsByMemberID.
This method returns a Vector. Presumably this will be filled with
references to Contact objects. Works great in java/rmi/ejb
land. Problem is that although a reasonable mapping happens to
soap via a complex type called Vector that is unbounded and supports
xsd:anyType, and although this maps reasonably to a c# &nb! sp;type of
object [], the problem happens at run time. If I pass data
through this that can't be serialized I get an exception. Can't be
predicted at compile time because Vector is a collection of 'untyped'
objects. OK, I know that Object is a type, but that's not the
point. You don't know if it's a Contact object that can be
serialized or if it is some FooBar object that cannot be. Plus,
the wsdl doesn't know for sure what it is going across, so it can't for
sure have described the complex type.
I've used C# as the
sample client because I figure it's a reasonable test - service in java,
client in c#. I've decided to always create service interfaces
that have completely typed collections. This means mapping a
vector to a typed array. Shouldn't be a problem. The service
interface can still be non-specific relative to the number of elements
of the array. Plus, you aren't going to try to hand someone a
reference to a collection for them to add to it anyway, so the point of
a dynamic collection is lost anyway. Only problem is if you really do
have a collection of heterogeneous object types. If so, you
probably want to figure out a different service interface anyway.
Hope this helps. Also hope that the
attachments come through on the list. I'm more of a lurker, so
contributing to lists is new to me.
tc
----- Original Message
-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002
12:35 PM
Subject: Vectors
in JavaBeans
My web service
returns a JavaBean with a vector of another type of bean as a member. In
other words I have a "FamilyBean" that contains a Vector of
"MemberBeans". With a Java web client this is not a problem,
because the client "understands" what a Vector is. But I want to support
all types of clients transparently.
Is my only option to alter
my JavaBean to use an array instead of a Vector?
It is
possible using type mapping to represent a Vector of objects as an
array? (Without having to alter the beans?)
Is there some other
solution to this problem?
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