Editing SAML2 Metadata

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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:

* Notepad++ - Generally light weight.  It is a very useful editor to have handy on any machine you use.
* 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 XMLSpy.

Namespaces

The primary namespaces used within SAML2 Metadata are:

The following are additional namespaces you may encounter but are only for very special use cases:

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>