Question

I have a web sercice method that recieves an object. One of the attributes is “interval” which is an integer.

I would like to make this atribute required but without providing any default value – I want the user to be required to explicitly set a value.

If I use int interval – the attribute is exposed as int and if the user does not explicitly set the attribute, a zero (Java default for primitive int) will be sent.

If I use Integer interval – the attribute is exposed as Integer and is declared optional in the WSDL so the user can’t see it is required before sending the request.

If I use Integer interval with @XmlElement(required = true) or @XmlElement(nillable = false) – the attribute is exposed as int.

The attribute can have any integer – negative, zero and positive so I can’t use a default value to indicate that the attribute was not explicitly set.

I can use BigInteger interval with @XmlElement(required = true) but than we are missing the advantages of using the core type Integer.

I would like to expose the attribute as Integer so I will get null if the user did not set the attribute and at the same time I would like the WSDL to expose that the attribute is required so users will know it is required simply by looking at the WSDL.

Answer 1

With @XmlElement(required = true) the WSDL was correct but the problem was that when using org.apache.cxf.tools.wsdlto.WSDLToJava tool on my WSDL the client was generated
with int interval instead of Integer interval.

The solution is to pass the “-b” option to the wsdl2java tool with a path to a jaxb bindings file that maps xsd:int to java.lang.Integer:

<jaxb:bindings xmlns:jaxb="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/jaxb"
           xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
           jaxb:version="2.0">
  <jaxb:globalBindings>
    <jaxb:javaType name="java.lang.Integer"
                   xmlType="xsd:int" />
  </jaxb:globalBindings>
</jaxb:bindings>

Using @XmlElement(required = true) and the “-b ” option, kept the element required (minOccurs=”1″) and exposed it as an Integer to the Java client.

More info: http://cxf.547215.n5.nabble.com/How-to-declare-an-attribute-required-and-non-primitive-td4815370.html