newbie: "no deserializer defined for array type XYZ" exceptions

[E. Seifert]

Hi,

I'm a newbie to Axis and SOAP, so please forbear with me: I'm currently
working in project using gSOAP 2.2.3b as server and Axis 1.1 RC2 as
client. I used the wsdl file generated by gSOAP and converted it using
wsdl2java, but I ran into an problem with Axis not able to deserialize
an array of complex type data.
The gSOAP wsdl file defines the following complex types:

...

  <complexType name="Property">
   <sequence>
    <element name="name" type="xsd:string" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" 
nillable="true"/>
    <element name="type" type="xsd:int" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
    <element name="value" type="xsd:string" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" 
nillable="true"/>
    <element name="readOnly" type="xsd:boolean" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
   </sequence>
  </complexType>
  <complexType name="ArrayOfProperty">
   <complexContent>
    <restriction base="SOAP-ENC:Array">
     <sequence>
      <element name="property" type="silva:Property" minOccurs="0" 
maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
     </sequence>
     <attribute ref="SOAP-ENC:arrayType" WSDL:arrayType="silva:Property[]"/>
    </restriction>
   </complexContent>
  </complexType>
  <complexType name="Description">
   <sequence>
    <element name="name" type="xsd:string" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" 
nillable="true"/>
    <element name="description" type="xsd:string" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" 
nillable="true"/>
    <element name="id" type="xsd:int" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
    <element name="singletree" type="xsd:boolean" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
    <element name="modifying" type="xsd:boolean" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
    <element name="properties" type="silva:ArrayOfProperty" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" 
nillable="true"/>
   </sequence>
  </complexType>
...

Additionally it defines an operation to return a description:

 <operation name="getDescriptionAvailable">
  <documentation>Returns the description for an available object.</documentation>
  <input message="tns:getDescriptionAvailableRequest"/>
  <output message="tns:getDescriptionAvailableResponse"/>
 </operation>
The only unresolved issue so far is that Axis throws an "no deserializer
defined for array type Property" when it gets the follwing SOAP code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"; 
xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"; xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"; 
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"; xmlns:silva="urn:silvacpp">
<SOAP-ENV:Body SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/";>
<silva:getDescriptionAvailableResponse>
        <description>
                <name xsi:type="xsd:string">Erzeuger NeuerBestand</name>
                <description xsi:type="xsd:string">Eine Beschreibung</description>
                <id xsi:type="xsd:int">7007</id>
                <singletree xsi:type="xsd:boolean">true</singletree>
                <modifying xsi:type="xsd:boolean">false</modifying>
                <properties xsi:type="SOAP-ENC:Array" SOAP-ENC:arrayType="Property[9]">
                        <property><name xsi:type="xsd:string">Key00</name>
                                <type xsi:type="xsd:int">1</type>
                                <value xsi:type="xsd:string">Baumart00</value>
                                <readOnly xsi:type="xsd:boolean">false</readOnly>
                        </property>
...

                </properties>
        </description>
</silva:getDescriptionAvailableResponse>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
I've also tried to get the property array from a seperate SOAP operation
in order to avoid the nested array, but it had no effect. It still threw
the same exception:
org.xml.sax.SAXException: No deserializer defined for array type Property
        at 
org.apache.axis.encoding.ser.ArrayDeserializer.onStartElement(ArrayDeserializer.java:304)
        at 
org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializerImpl.startElement(DeserializerImpl.java:428)
        at 
org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContextImpl.startElement(DeserializationContextImpl.java:962)
        at org.apache.axis.message.SAX2EventRecorder.replay(SAX2EventRecorder.java:198)
        at 
org.apache.axis.message.MessageElement.publishToHandler(MessageElement.java:718)
        at org.apache.axis.message.RPCElement.deserialize(RPCElement.java:232)
        at org.apache.axis.message.RPCElement.getParams(RPCElement.java:346)
        at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:2234)
        at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:2133)
        at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:1656)
        at 
silva.soap.Silva_wsdl.SilvaBindingStub.getDescriptionAvailableProperties(SilvaBindingStub.java:303)
        ...
As I haven't found much documentation or examples so far on arrays in
Axis I would be very grateful if someone in this list could help me or
at leat point out the right direction. On the list archive I read about
similar exceptions being related to a bug (#15698). If so, is there a
workaround? Hopefully, I posted everything you need to help me.
Thanks very much in advance
Eric