Question

I am currently using a Spring Batch application to call an API and parse out the entire JSON response into an XML to be consumed by another application. Currently we are using a rather large expand query with the API which sometimes times out on elements. The required output format for the results is

<?xml version...?>
<RECORDS>
    <RECORD>
        <PROP NAME="json.path.to.element.name">
            <PVAL>The value for the element</PVAL>
        </PROP>
        <PROP NAME="json.path.to.element2.name">
            <PVAL>The value for the element2</PVAL>
        </PROP>
        ...
    </RECORD>
    <RECORD>
        ...
    </RECORD>
    ...
</RECORDS>

This was being created using a DOMSource and a Transformer. This unfortunately does not take advantage of the Spring Batch chunk processing. I am updating this to extend StaxEventItemWriter and passing a list of mapped objects. My mapped entities are

@XmlElement
public class Record implements Serializable {

    private List<Prop> prop;
}

@XmlElement
public class Prop implements Serializable {

    @XmlAttribute
    private String name;

    @XmlValue
    private String pVal;
}

My Spring Batch XML config for my marshaller is

<bean id="xmlMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.xstream.XStreamMarshaller">
    <property name="aliases">
        <map>
            <entry key="RECORD" value="com...Record"/>
            <entry key="PROP" value="com...Prop" />
        </map>
    </property>
</bean>

The problem I am getting is my output format is not working. I am getting

<?xml version...?>
<RECORDS>
    <RECORD>
        <prop>
            <PROP>
                <name>json.path.to.element1.name"</name>
                <pVal>The value for the element1</pVal>
            </PROP>
                <name>json.path.to.element2.name"</name>
                <pVal>The value for the element2</pVal>
            </PROP>
            ...
        </prop>
    </RECORD>
    <RECORD>
        <prop>
            ...
        </prop>
    </RECORD>
    ...
</RECORDS>

The two things that need to happen is 1) the <prop> entity needs to be removed as directly under the Record are all the <PROP> entities. and 2) the <PROP> needs to be <PROP NAME...>

I have tried messing with the annotations but can’t seem to change the output. I am not even sure what the XSD would be for the desired structure.

Answer 1

For the second part of your question, the correct annotation for the name field should be as below if you want it to be an attribute.

@XStreamAsAttribute
private String name;

Following the XStream annotation documents , the first part should be:

@XStreamImplicit(itemFieldName="PROP")
private List<Prop> prop;