Question

How to configure JAXB unmarshaller so it will trim leading and trailing whitespaces from strings?

For instance let’s consider a simple binding between a Java bean and XML using JAXB annotations:

@XmlRootElement(name='bean') class Bean {    @XmlElement(required=true)   String name;    @XmlElement(required=true)   int number; } 

I would like to be able to unmarshal XML given bellow so bean.name does not include starting and trailing whitespaces – is ‘My name‘, not ‘\n My name\n ‘.

<bean>   <name>     My name   </name>   <number>1</number> </bean> 

Answer 1

Use a custom Adapter class. I was thinking that NormalizedStringAdapter would do the work but it’s only for unmarshaling and it doesn’t do what you want anyway.

public class MyNormalizedStringAdapter extends XmlAdapter<String, String> {      @Override     public String marshal(String text) {         return text.trim();     }      @Override     public String unmarshal(String v) throws Exception {         return v.trim();     } } 

then decorate the field with your adapter like this:

@XmlElement(required=true) @XmlJavaTypeAdapter(MyNormalizedStringAdapter.class) String name;