Complex type to String unmarshalling

IamtheWalrus

Can anyone tell me how to convert a complex object into a String in JAXB?

Scenario: The Car objects below has a nested element called Person. The Person element has 2 fields. Does anyone know how to unmarshall the Person object into a single string? I do not need any other information, just the Person name.

Is there a way to do this with JAXB?

E.g.

XML
[HTML]<Car>
<Owner>
<Name>
John Blogs
</name>
</owner>
</Car>
[/HTML]

How do I create a Java object like the following:

class Car{
    private String owner; //John Blogs
}

GreeBo

You need to create a class for each "containing" node, so Car, Owner and Name, car has an Owner member, Owner has a Name member (which is a String)

Then you can just annotate each class

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class Car {

    @XmlElement(name = "Owner")
    private Owner owner;

    getOwner();
    setOwner();
}

Then instantiate your JAXB Context (statically, you only need one of these as they are thread safe)

JAXBContext ctx =    JAXBContext.newInstance(Car.class.getPackage().getName());

Then actually unmarshall your XML into your pojo

Unmarshaller u = ctx.createUnmarshaller();
        Car car  = (Car) u.unmarshal(new StringReader(xmlInput));

You get the name by doing a car.getOwner().getName();



/edit
You cant (easily) create the object you describe because thats not the object that your XML naturally represents.

If you have access to modify the XML then you could switch the name to be an attribute
<Car ownerName="John Blogs"/>

And the update the car class to have
@XmlAttribute(name = "ownerName")
private String ownerName

IamtheWalrus

GreeBo wrote: »

You need to create a class for each "containing" node, so Car, Owner and Name, car has an Owner member, Owner has a Name member (which is a String)

Then you can just annotate each class

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class Car {

    @XmlElement(name = "Owner")
    private Owner owner;

    getOwner();
    setOwner();
}

Then instantiate your JAXB Context (statically, you only need one of these as they are thread safe)

JAXBContext ctx =    JAXBContext.newInstance(Car.class.getPackage().getName());

Then actually unmarshall your XML into your pojo

Unmarshaller u = ctx.createUnmarshaller();
        Car car  = (Car) u.unmarshal(new StringReader(xmlInput));

You get the name by doing a car.getOwner().getName();



/edit
You cant (easily) create the object you describe because thats not the object that your XML naturally represents.

If you have access to modify the XML then you could switch the name to be an attribute
<Car ownerName="John Blogs"/>

And the update the car class to have
@XmlAttribute(name = "ownerName")
private String ownerName

Thanks for you reply. I do not have access to the XML as it's an external service. I decided to write a class that implements the DomHandler interface. This means when the Person element is unmarshalled my DomHandler class is invoked and can manipulated what is returned, in my case string.

Procasinator

I believe you can use XmlPath.

Something like:

class Car{
    @XmlPath("Owner/Name/text()")
    private String owner; //John Blogs
}

IamtheWalrus

Procasinator wrote: »

I believe you can use XmlPath.

Something like:

class Car{
    @XmlPath("Owner/Name/text()")
    private String owner; //John Blogs
}

How does that work if I'm not using Eclipse MOXy?

Procasinator

IamtheWalrus wrote: »

How does that work if I'm not using Eclipse MOXy?

Sorry, didn't cop that it was a non-standard attribute.

IamtheWalrus

I added Eclipse MOXy as a dependency and XMLPat worked.

Thanks a million.