java - How to serialize and de-serialize objects using JAXB?

Question

I have an issue. I want to convert an object into another object using JAXB. As in, I have a class com.home.Student, and another class com.school.Student, both have same arguments, in fact both are same (copy paste), but different package. I want to perform the conversion between them using JAXB.

How to do that, please help me.

Answer 1

It would be nice if you included some code that explains your problem.

JAXB 101 says you should place the right annotations, then you can serialize and deserialize correctly. You should properly annotate your classes with @XmlRootElement, @XmlElement, @XmlAttribute, etc

For example:

@XmlRootElement(name="student")
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)
class Student {
  @XmlElement(name="name")
  private String name;

  @XmlElement(name="age")
  private int age;

  public Student() {
  }

  public String getName() { return name; }

  public int getAge() { return age; }
}

Then you can use serialize it using JAXB Marshaller:

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance(Student.class);
Marshaller m = context.createMarshaller();
m.marshal(student, writer);

And deserialize it as well by Unmarshelling the input ..

JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance(Student.class);
Unmarshaller m = context.createUnmarshaller();
return (Student)m.unmarshal(new StringReader(input));

Make sure you look at the JavaDoc I mentioned above since there are many ways to do so.

If you cannot modify your classes, you can still use JAXB (or you can use XStream) Assuming your class is the following:

class Student {
  private String name;
  private int age;

  public Student() {
  }

  public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; }
  public String getName() { return name; }
  public void setAge(int age) { this.age = age; }
  public int getAge() { return age; }
}

You can serialize it by doing:

Student student = new Student();
student.setAge(25);
student.setName('FooBar');
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance(Student.class);
Marshaller m = context.createMarshaller();
m.marshal(new JAXBElement(new QName(Student.class.getSimpleName()), Student.class, student), writer);
System.out.println(writer.toString());

If you are using XStream, you can do the serialization without Annotations too (and it is more controllable). http://x-stream.github.io/tutorial.html