Question

Java EE 6, NetBeans 6.9.1.

Part of my project is a SOAPy web service. I’ve written the server-side part of it, and that seems to work OK because GlassFish 3.0.1 is correctly generating WSDL files for the web services.

The web service sends and receives JPA entity classes, which the client operates on. I used NetBeans’ “New > Web Service Client” wizard to generate the source code for the resource classes that represent the entities when they get sent by the web service — these resources have the same fields as the entity classes, getters and setters for those fields, and certain annotations from javax.xml.bind.annotation (e.g., @XmlAccessorType, @XmlType, @XmlElement), but they lack the other methods, etc. of the entity classes.

Once my web service client receives these resources, how do I get back the proper entity objects? I’d rather not manually reconstruct every entity, considering how many classes I have and how complicated their relationships are, this would be a lot of work.

Thank you! 🙂

P.S. I’m not sure what these resources classes are called; if anyone knows, it would help me write a more descriptive title.

Answer 1

One option would be to use a JAXB and JPA combo with something like HyperJAXB 3. Have a look at:

• Relational storage using JAXB, JPA and HyperJAXB
• Building JAX-WS, JAXB and JPA-based web service with Apache CXF, Spring and Hyperjaxb3
• From WSDL to JAXB to JPA with a single schema: Adventures in Hyperjaxb3

Or using a JAXB implementation providing JPA support through extensions like MOXy:

• JPA Entities to XML – Bidirectional Relationships (and Blaise’s blog in general)
• Creating a RESTful Web Service – Part 1/5
• EclipseLink/Examples/MOXy/JPA