Encode XML-data as an attribute

[Rickard Bellgrim]

> > In my IdP, I would like to create an attribute which consists of XML-data.
> 
> Reconsider. Very few SPs will be able to handle such a thing.

There is a existing web-service which can tell the application if a subject can act on an object. The answer to this query is not as simple as yes or no. XACML might perhaps be more appropriate, but SAML has been considered for this. The call to the AA must be made from the application layer and not from the Shibboleth SP, because the SP will only know the subject and not the object. Furthermore, I do not think Shibboleth SP can combine two attributes into a new principal and send that one to the AA using the SimpleAggrigation.
 
The complex answer could in theory be broken down into different attributes, but the simplest way was to have them all in one attribute and reuse existing XML-parsers.

I was able to create the XML-data by just adding it directly to the variable in the script (variable = <XML />). The value could however not be stored in the attribute without serializing the data (variable.toXMLString()). The result was a string with escaped characters.

// Rickard