The javax.xml.rpc.encoding package contains the classes and interfaces that form the portable part of the serialization framework used to convert between Java language types and XML messages. Although the rules for mapping between these two representations are well-defined by the JAX-RPC specification, only a minimal interface to the serialization framework is defined, leaving most of the details to be determined by vendors that implement the specification. This has two consequences:

• Although a minimal serialization interface is defined, it is far from sufficient to allow developers to create their own serializers that would work across different JAX-RPC implementations. Serializer portability was not an aim of the JAX-RPC 1.0 specification.

• Although the JAX-RPC reference implementation contains a serialization framework, it is not part of the public API and there is no documentation available for it. Therefore, in practice, even if you don't mind the fact that your custom serializers will be nonportable, it is very difficult to even get started writing one. Furthermore, the nonpublic nature of the API means that incompatible changes may be made at any time, which may cause your serializers to stop working.

As a result, this book does not describe how to write custom serializers, and this chapter documents only the minimal public API.

The XMLType class defines constants that represent various XML Schema and SOAP data types. This class is probably the only one in this package that application developers will be likely to use. The TypeMappingRegistry and TypeMapping interfaces provide groupings of serializers for specific XML data types using one or more encoding schemes. The serializers themselves implement the Serializer and Deserializer interfaces, which, at least in the current version of the specification, are marker interfaces that define no methods. Serializers are obtained from a SerializerFactory or a DeserializerFactory, and use instances of the SerializationContext and DeserializationContext interfaces to maintain state during the serialization or deserialization of a message.

Interfaces

public interface DeserializationContext;
public interface Deserializer extends Serializable;
public interface DeserializerFactory extends Serializable;
public interface SerializationContext;
public interface Serializer extends Serializable;
public interface SerializerFactory extends Serializable;
public interface TypeMapping;
public interface TypeMappingRegistry extends Serializable;

Classes

public class XMLType;