[castor-dev] Mapping for Tomcat in a WAR

[Tim Holloway]

I'm trying to marshal out a collection of JavaBeans to XML using Castor from a
JSP in a WAR being served up from Tomcat.

I tried the easy way out first - just passed the object (a
java.util.List) to the static marshalling method. This, alas, simply
results in a NullPointerException when Castor invokes the
org.apache.xml.serialize.Printer.

After about 3 hours of trying to figure out NullPointerException, I
set up a mapping, having finally realized that even had the
serialization not failed, there was no obvious place to name the extra
XML tags needed to do the job decently. Got that working in a standalone
app, output XML and was ready for the Big Time - making the XML come out
from within a JSP.

Now comes the question: How do I get the mapping applied to the
marshalling process when the mapping is no longer in a discrete file, but rather
in a subfile of a WAR? I did a:

out.println("URL for mapping='" +
application.getResource("/WEB-INF/BalancesMapping.xml") + "' <br>");
out.println("Mapping is " + mapping );

and got:

URL for mapping='jndi:/localhost/mywebapp/WEB-INF/BalancesMapping.xml'
Mapping is org.exolab.castor.mapping.Mapping@fbbbc

Feeding that URL to construct a mapping throws no exceptions, but when I
apply the mapping to a constructed marshaller, like so:

Marshaller marshaller = new Marshaller( out );
marshaller.setMapping( mapping );
marshaller.marshal( list );

I get the same NullPointerException stacktrace as if I had set no
mapping at all.

Can someone tell me how to do this properly?

Thanks!

Tim Holloway

----------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailing, send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of:
unsubscribe castor-dev