Re: Complex types in web services

From:
Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Sat, 23 Oct 2010 14:59:33 +0100
Message-ID:
<alpine.DEB.1.10.1010231452320.27709@urchin.earth.li>
On Fri, 22 Oct 2010, Arne Vajh?j wrote:

On 22-10-2010 05:54, ses wrote:

What's the best approach for dealing with complex types (such as
HashMap<String,String>) with web services? Obviously for full
interoperability the only option would be to convert to a string array
- String[][]

But I tried using a wrapper class around a HashMap<String, String> and
it will build and deploy fine, though when I query the web service
using a tool such as soapUI, I simply get<return/> as the value for
what should contain my hashmap wrapper.

Is there any way I can get the wsgen tool to generate a complex type
of this sort or is it a much better idea to use primitives??


I would convert HashMap<String,String> to NameValuePair[] - that
is a very portable structure.


That's a better idea than either a String[][] or a tool-mapped HashMap.

But i'd go a step further and use something with domain meaning instead
ofa a NameValuePair. Say, if you want to move the names of characters in a
play with their descriptions, send a List<CharacterDefinition>, where:

public class CharacterDefinition {
  private final String name;
  private final String description;
  // constructor, getters, etc
}

That should get mapped into a suitable schema type, and leads to more
readable XML, and a measure of additional type safety and
self-documentation in the consuming system.

tom

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