Jeff.Krug: Created page with "This provides a brief overview of how to edit SAML2 Metadata. ==Editor== It is generally a very good idea to have an XML aware editor when you are editing XML. It does not n..."

2019-01-22T20:22:02Z

Created page with "This provides a brief overview of how to edit SAML2 Metadata. ==Editor== It is generally a very good idea to have an XML aware editor when you are editing XML. It does not n..."

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This provides a brief overview of how to edit SAML2 Metadata.

==Editor==
It is generally a very good idea to have an XML aware editor when you are editing XML. It does not need to be so smart that it includes built-in schema validation (although this can be useful), but at a minimum you want syntax coloring, basic XML format checking, and what not. A couple of popular and free choices:

* [http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ Notepad++] - Generally light weight. It is a very useful editor to have handy on any machine you use.
* [https://www.eclipse.org/ Eclipse] - Eclipse is a major IDE and typically you would only install it on a development machine.
* If you are doing lots of XML work, you way want a tool that is designed specifically for XML such as [http://www.altova.com/xmlspy.html XMLSpy].

==Namespaces==
The primary namespaces used within SAML2 Metadata are:
* '''urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata''' - (abbreviated '''md''') Always required
* '''http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#''' - (abbreviated '''ds''') Always required
* '''urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:metadata:attribute''' - (abbreviated '''mdattr''') Used when SAML attributes are included.
* '''urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion''' - (abbreviated '''saml''') Used when SAML attributes about entities are included and when available SAML Attributes are published for Identity Providers.

The following are additional namespaces you may encounter but are only for very special use cases:
* '''xmlns:gfipmws="http://gfipm.net/standards/metadata/2.1/webservices"'''' - For GFIPM Web Services.
* '''xmlns:fed="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsfed/federation/200706"''' - For WS Federation (very commonly included in ADFS generated SAML2 Metadata)

It is recommended by GFIPM that all namespaces be declared with a prefix to make the XML more explicit instead of using default namespaces.

==Samples==
Defaulting the md namespace, declaring the ds namespace at the entity descriptor:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<EntityDescriptor xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata" xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">
...
<ds:KeyInfo>
...
</ds:KeyInfo
...
</EntityDescriptor>

Defaulting the md namespace, declaring the ds namespace when it is used:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<EntityDescriptor xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata">
...
<ds:KeyInfo xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">
...
</ds:KeyInfo
...
</EntityDescriptor>

Defaulting all namespaces:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<EntityDescriptor xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata">
...
<KeyInfo xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">
...
</KeyInfo
...
</EntityDescriptor>

Recommended way with explicit namespaces and declared in the opening tag:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<md:EntityDescriptor xmlns:md="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata" xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">
...
<ds:KeyInfo>
...
</ds:KeyInfo
...
</md:EntityDescriptor>

Editing SAML2 Metadata - Revision history

Jeff.Krug: Created page with "This provides a brief overview of how to edit SAML2 Metadata. ==Editor== It is generally a very good idea to have an XML aware editor when you are editing XML. It does not n..."