RE: ClassCastException and handlers

[Glen Daniels <gd...@macromedia.com>]

JAX-RPC Handlers and Axis Handlers are different beasties, which is a bit of a shame, but makes some sense too.  There is no mechanism in JAX-RPC by which you actually connect Handlers to your system on the server side, for one thing - the only thing it specifies is how to programatically register client-side Handlers via the HandlerRegistry.

JSR-109 is coming out with a deployment descriptor syntax for registering (JAX-RPC) Handlers on the server side, and that will be the way you get those into the system.  There are also some very limiting rules right now in the JSR-109 spec about what Handlers can do and when they run.  So what we on the Axis team will likely do is provide a JSR-109-style hook for deploying JAX-RPC Handlers when that goes final, and that's how you'll use JAX-RPC Handlers.

If you want the functionality/configurability of Axis Handlers, you should use the org.apache.axis.Handler interface.

--Glen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Gregg [mailto:john.gregg@techarch.com]
> Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 11:15 AM
> To: axis-dev@xml.apache.org
> Subject: ClassCastException and handlers
> 
> 
> Hi all.
> 
> Perhaps you saw my note to axis-user about a handler I was 
> trying to write.
> I created a handler that was a subclass of
> javax.xml.rpc.handler.GenericHandler but WSDDDeployableItem 
> expects it to be
> org.apache.axis.Handler.  Consequently I was getting a 
> ClassCastException on
> line 355 of version 1.35.  The Axis implementation is free to 
> use its own
> implementations internally, but all points of contact with 
> application code
> should stick to the interfaces.  That's the point of the 
> interface and the
> main reason I like Axis so much better than Apache SOAP.  
> Anyway, it doesn't
> appear to be a trivial matter to just change the cast, 
> unfortunately.  I'd
> appreciate it if someone can suggest a way around this.  I'm 
> even willing to
> tie myself to the Axis implemetation classes in the short run 
> if I know I
> can remove those dependencies later.
> 
> thanks
> 
> john
>