Re: XStream vs XMLGregorianCalendar

From:
Lew <noone@lewscanon.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:19:06 -0500
Message-ID:
<ii4a25$p9f$1@news.albasani.net>
On 01/30/2011 04:18 AM, bw wrote:

Friends tell me the way out!

There xsd-diagram, with the help of her made JAXB java-class.
The class is filled with data, among other things, there are element
dateTo of the type javax.xml.datatype.XMLGregorianCalendar.
After this class does XStream XML, I get description of this item:
<dateTo
class="com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.datatype.XMLGregorianCalendarImpl">
      <year>2011</year>
      <month>1</month>
      <day>30</day>
      <timezone>180</timezone>
      <hour>12</hour>
      <minute>13</minute>
      <second>34</second>
      <fractionalSecond>0.315</fractionalSecond>
    </ dateTo>

I do not like such a description, tell me, you can use XStream to get
out of the XML this form:
<dateTo>2011-01-30T09:13:34.356 Z</dateTo>?


I am certain one can, but why would you want to?

What is it that you do not like about the standard JAXB output, exactly?

I assume the "XStream" to which you refer is http://xstream.codehaus.org/, yes?

Some folks might prefer a solution without a third-party library dependency.

The main advantage of JAXB is that it handles the boilerplate mechanics of XML
translation for you. It also has the advantage of coming standard with the JDK.

It isn't perfect, but it's awfully good.

There are a couple of strategies to integrate JAXB-generated classes with your
code. Broadly, it's adapt or modify, that is, write cover classes to use the
schema classes, or directly modify the generated code. The work for schema
changes is roughly the same either way, but the adapter strategy is somewhat
more potent for deployment and enhancement.

(Another question is whether to version-control the generated .java files or
depend on the build to create them each time. A schema and its associated
JAXB classes make a nice JAR.) [1]

Either way, you have to integrate the schema classes with your domain model.
Domain objects can have muncher methods for schema graphs, or you can have
translation layer - perhaps that very adapter layer aforementioned - that
understands the schemas on one side and the domain on the other.

In the case of 'XMLGregorianCalendar', the Java language's official API
thoughtfully defines the 'toGregorianCalendar()' and various 'setX()' methods
that will help that effort. Overall that effort should not exceed that of
coding it using XStream's API, not accounting for JAXB's labor savings from
the translation to 'XMLGregorianCalendar' in the first place. Factor in the
schema-aware methods like 'XMLGregorianCalendar#toXMLFormat()', 'compare()',
and 'getXMLSchemaType()', and the JAXB type is a winner hands-down.

http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/xml/datatype/XMLGregorianCalendar.html

--
Lew
Ceci n'est pas une fen??tre.
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