j8583 cannot handle field 128

Question

I've been using j8583 to parse and construct ISO 8583 message in Java. All seems well until one of the message has field 128 in it. That field is always missing when I construct or parse a message that has bit 128, but the other bit (2...127) are fine.

I've double check the xml configuration, and nothing wrong there.

Is it just me or there are actually a bug in j8583? anybody know how to solve this? I'm on a really tight schedule, so changing library for iso 8583 is very unlikely

Answer 1

I'm the author of j8583. I just reviewed the code and there is indeed a problem with MessageFactory.newMessage() where it won't assign field 128 to new messages. I just committed the change, so you can get the latest source from the repository and your new messages will include field 128.

I also reviewed the parsing code and I couldn't find anything wrong there. If you parse a message with field 128 and it's in your parsing guide, the message should contain it.

However, I've encountered certain ISO8583 implementations in which a message has the 128 field set in the bitmap but it's really not in the message. In these cases j8583 can't parse the message because there's missing data. I'm still trying to figure out how to handle this.

When you find any bugs in j8583 please post them in the project page, so I get notified and solve them. I don't usually look for j8583 tagged questions in this site (but I should probably start doing so).