Unmarshal element attribute and text to separate fields with jaxb

Question

How do I annotate the externalValue and companyId fields in the Root class so that "abc" gets mapped to externalValue and "123" gets mapped to companyId?
Do I need the @XmlJavaTypeAdapter annotation? Where? I'm hoping that if I do, it can just handle those 2 fields and I can leave the annotations for title and countryCodes as-is.

XML:

<item>
    <externalValue companyId="123">abc</externalValue>
    <title>My Title</title>
    <country>US</country>
    <country>CA</country>
</item>

POJO:

@XmlRootElement
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class Item {
    private String externalValue;
    private String companyId;
    @XmlElement
    private String title;
    @XmlElement(name = "country")
    public List<String> countryCodes;

    // getters and setters...
}

pirho · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-18T15:07:18.920

1

I am afraid that this is not possible to achieve only with annotations (so without extra POJO and some adapter) in general case namely JAXB specs. However if your happen to use MOXy as your JAXB implementation it is easy as adding annotation @XmlPath like this:

@XmlPath("externalValue/@companyId")
private String companyId;

Related question: Unmarshalling an XML using Xpath expression and jaxb

edited Dec 18 '19 at 15:07

answered Dec 17 '19 at 19:55

pirho

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 16 '19 at 18:15

You have to define the class in the following manner.

@XmlRootElement
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class Item {

    private CompanyIdValue companyIdValue;
    @XmlElement
    private String title;

    @XmlElement(name = "country")
    public List<String> countryCodes;

    //getter and setter
}

In case of both attribute in an XML element tag, you have to define a separate class. Define a separate class called CompanyIdValue, for XML element, you have to define @XmlValue and for attribute you have to annotate with @XmlAttribute

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAttribute;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlValue;
public class CompanyIdValue {

    @XmlElement(name = "externalValue")
    private String externalValue;

    private String companyId;

    public String getExternalValue() {
        return externalValue;
    }

    @XmlValue
    public void setExternalValue(String externalValue) {
        this.externalValue = externalValue;
    }

    public String getCompanyId() {
        return companyId;
    }

    @XmlAttribute
    public void setCompanyId(String companyId) {
        this.companyId = companyId;
    }
}

I provide below a test program also for testing.

public class Test {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
      Item item = new Item();
      CompanyIdValue companyIdValue = new CompanyIdValue();
      companyIdValue.setCompanyId("SomeId");
      companyIdValue.setExternalValue("Some External value");
      item.setCompanyIdValue(companyIdValue);
      item.setCountryCodes(Arrays.asList("A", "B"));
      item.setTitle("Some Title");

      JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(Item.class);
      Marshaller jaxbMarshaller = jaxbContext.createMarshaller();

      jaxbMarshaller.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, Boolean.TRUE);
      jaxbMarshaller.marshal(item, System.out);

    } catch (JAXBException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
}

I don't want to create any new POJO classes, only annotations and possibly a helper class. — Matt, Dec 16 '19 at 18:55
@Matt, injecting annotations directly may not work as it has both attribute and xml element tag. — Sambit, Dec 16 '19 at 18:57

Unmarshal element attribute and text to separate fields with jaxb

XML:

POJO:

2 Answers2