Hi,
I understand that the spec doesn't handle null values. As xml-rpc
implements the SPEC, I find it completely valid, that null values are
rejected *by default*. However, I can think of no reason why they
shouldn't be supported *as a vendor extension*. Most of the other Apache
software implementing specs do have vendor extensions (Xerces, Xalan,
Tomcat, ...)
Question: Would anyone mind me adding such support? If so, how should it
look like? My personal suggestion would go like this:
- The client is configured through a property of XmlRpcClient.
For example, the class may recieve a new property
public void setSupportingNullValues(boolean pValue)
The default value being false, of course.
- The client announces to the server, that it wishes to support
null values. Server detects the announcement and behaves
accordingly. The announcement might be a special HTTP header
or better a special attribute like
xmlns:ex="http://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/namespaces/vendorext";
ex:nullValues="true"
- To submit a null value, an empty tag
<null/>
might be used instead of <int>3</int> or similar values.
Jochen
