Re: emacs-25 b6b47AF: Properly encode/decode base64Binary data in SOAP

[Michael Albinus]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> The decoding in soap-client is consistent, even though not in the way
>> you would like it :-)
>> 
>>   * if it is told that a value is a string, it will return a string,
>>   * if it is told that a value is a byte array it will return a byte
>> array (unibyte string)
>
> Told by whom?  By debbugs.el, by the WSDL, by the debbugs server, by
> something else?  (Sorry, I know almost nothing about the debbugs or
> SOAP.)

By the XML data returned by the debbugs (SOAP) server.

>> I think the problem here is that the debbugs server encodes utf8
>> values as base64, even though the message envelope is utf8 XML and
>> could handle them as normal strings.   debbugs.el does not want to
>> know about this, so expects strings to be strings.  soap-client.el is
>> caught in the middle.
>
> Which ones of the involved parties know, or can know, that the
> originator is a string?

The debbugs server could know. But is uses the simple-minded SOAP-Lite
Perl library, which encodes everything into base64Binary which doesn't
look like ASCII.

Best regards, Michael.