RE: [xml-dev] XML Transformation

Firstly, when you say "parser", I suspect you mean "XSLT processor". (It's a common mistake, but in cases like this it's important to be precise).

Secondly, you say that the namespace is being removed from these elements, but I don't think that's true: they are still in the same namespace, only the prefix has changed. Correct me if I have misunderstood.

For better or worse, the digital signature mechanisms follow XML Canonicalization by deciding that namespace prefixes are significant: see

XSLT 2.0 gives you complete control over the prefixes that are used in your result tree. XSLT 1.0 gives the implementation a lot of discretion in theory, but in practice it is usually possible to persuade the processor to use the prefixes that you want.

http://www.saxonica.com/

Hello,
I have a third party incoming XML at the transport layer which has a structure as below

<d:a xmlns:a="...." xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">
.....
.....
<dsig:Signature xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#"> (the dsig namespace is applied to all child elements as well)
......
.....
</dsig:Signature>
</d:a>

When my parser is parsing the xml this is what i am getting

<d:a xmlns:a="...." xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">
.....
.....
<Signature xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#"> (the dsig namespace is removed from all the child elements)
......
.....
</Signature>
</d:a>

Then when i try to validate the signature it fails. The partner is saying that i have wrongly parsed the xml. They calculated the digest with the "dsig" prefix in their xml where as i am calcuating it after removing "dsig" namespace as there is a default namespace and thus the parser overrides the parent namespace declaration.

Which one is correct, should my parser have retained the "dsig" namespace even though a default namespace is defined or i am doing the right thing?

We are using apache axis 1.3 for parsing the xml which is comming over SOAP.

thanks in advance for the help

Regards,
Anishek