Question

I have object, tree/model/hierarchy, whatever the correct term is. It consists of what could be characterized as a one-to-one mapping of the desired XML.

That is i have the following (in a non-standard UML sort of syntax)

class A {
    class B b[*]
    class C
    class D
}

class B {
    class C c[*]
    string AttributeFoo = "bar"
}

class C {
    string AttributeThis = "is"
}

class D {
    string AttributeName = "d"
}

Desired output is something like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<a>
    <b attribute-foo="bar">
        <c attribute-this="is"/>
    </b>
    <c attribute-this="is"/>
    <d attribute-name="d"/>
</a>

What would you propose to be the best, and/or the simplest way of achieving this goal?

Answer 1

I would look at JAXB because a) you get it in the standard library and b) it isn’t that complicated. This code requires Java 6:

@XmlRootElement public static class A {
  public List<B> b = new ArrayList<B>();
}

public static class B {
  public List<C> c = new ArrayList<C>();
  @XmlAttribute(name = "attribute-foo") public String attributeFoo = "foo";
}

public static class C {
  @XmlAttribute(name = "attribute-this") public String attributeThis = "is";
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
  A a = new A();
  a.b.add(new B());
  a.b.get(0).c.add(new C());
  JAXB.marshal(a, System.out);
}
//TODO: getters/setters, error handling and so on

Output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<a>
    <b attribute-foo="foo">
        <c attribute-this="is"/>
    </b>
</a>