Hi Rudy
I believe I read in a previous post on Nabble as well as in the
documentation that RESTful services cannot return Collections, in particular
generic collections like List<MyClass>. I have a few questions concerning
this:
1. Can someone explain WHY this is so. I have a base service
implementation that is both a JAXWS service and a JAXRS service. JAXWS has
no problem returning a collection. I'd prefer not to have to change the
return type just to satisfy my REST needs.
Supporting explicit parameterized return types (like Collection<Bar>) is on the
map for JAX-RS.
Realistically it will be looked after the 1.0-final of the JAX-RS api is
supported (most of it at least).
We're probably talking about the end of the year - unless some contributions
are made.
For now some additional work on behalf of a user is needed.
2. The User doc mentions several alternatives to creating a custom wrapper
class for the collection, but does not provide any examples of the
alternatives, in particular
- "one can provide an Object factory which will tell JAXB how to marshal
a given type (in case of Collections - its template type)" This sounds like
just what the doctor ordered. Can anyone provide an example of this and
will it somehow screw up my JAXWS calls
I think if you provide an ObjectFactory which will have a method creating a
JAXBContext for
say List<MyClass> then it would work. Unfortunately I do not know much about JAXB advanced techniques -hopefully, if you go with
this option you'll get more help either on this list or on a JAXB list.
- "Another option is to register one or more JAX-RS ContextResolver
providers capable of creating JAXBContexts for a number of different types.
The default JAXBElementProvider will check these resolvers first before
attempting to create a JAXBContext on its own.+ -- Not sure if this will do
what I need, but I'd like a code example if possible.
See http://blogs.sun.com/japod/entry/better_json_available_in_jersey
It's very similar to the approach above : implement say
MyClassContextResolver<JAXBContext>
and return a dedicated JAXBContext for MyClass...This resolver would need to be
registered
Finally, if neither of the above are what I'm looking for, any other
ideas/code patches?
Another option is to add a method-level annotation, see for ex :
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/cxf/trunk/distribution/src/main/release/samples/java_first_jaxws/src/demo/hw/server/HelloWorld.java
and check the actual adapter implementation in the same demo - I hope JAX-RS runtime will eventually create such adapters on the
fly...
Yet another option is to register a custom provider for say List<MyClass> and do some custom un(marshalling), possibly bypassing
JAXB altogether
Let us know please if either of these options will work for you.
Cheers, Sergey
Thanks in advance
Rudy Bonefas
Next Century Corp.
Senior Code Monkey
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