Thank God for Tripper McCarthy

A long time ago, in our galaxy, Tripper McCarthy posted this:

Tripper McCarthy  Tue Jun 24 2003 19:19:31 GMT-0500 (CDT) 

 There have been several posts asking how to change the body of a message
(not the header) from within a handler. Here is a way to pull it off. It's a
little strange, but it works. 

    public void invoke(MessageContext msgContext) throws AxisFault {
        try {
            javax.xml.soap.SOAPMessage soapMessage =
msgContext.getRequestMessage();
            String oldRequest =
soapMessage.getSOAPPart().getEnvelope().toString();
            
            int index = oldRequest.indexOf("            index = oldRequest.indexOf(">",index);
            String newRequest = oldRequest.substring(0,index+1) +
                "5" +
                oldRequest.substring(index+1,oldRequest.length());
            
            ByteArrayInputStream istream = new
ByteArrayInputStream(newRequest.getBytes());            
            Message msg = new Message(istream, false);
            msgContext.setRequestMessage(msg);

        }
        catch(Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            throw new AxisFault(e.getMessage());
        }
    }

Thanks Tripper. I've been beating my head for hours trying to modify the message using the deeply-nested object model in Handler. Your solution cut to the chase.