Question

I’m looking for a library/framework to generate/parse TXT files from/into Java objects.
I’m thinking in something like Castor or JAXB, where the mapping between the file and the objects can be defined programmatically or with XML/annotations. The TXT file is not homogeneous and has no separators (fixed positions). The size of the file is not big, therefore DOM-like handling is allowed, no streaming required.

For instance:

TextWriter.write(Collection objects) -> FileOutputStream
TextReader.read(FileInputStream fis) -> Collection

Answer 1

I suggest you use google’s protocol buffers

Protocol buffers are a flexible, efficient, automated mechanism for
serializing structured data – think XML, but smaller, faster, and
simpler. You define how you want your data to be structured once, then
you can use special generated source code to easily write and read
your structured data to and from a variety of data streams and using a
variety of languages. You can even update your data structure without
breaking deployed programs that are compiled against the “old” format.

Protobuf messages can be exported/read in binary or text format.

Other solutions would depend on what you call text file : if base64 is texty enough for you, you could simply use java standard serialization with base64 encoding of the binary stream.