Question

This is the first time I am working this intensly with XML in Java. The code uses JAXB to generate classes and then parse. I have an XML with a date…

A class was generated by JAXB from my XML. It generated the following for the field:

@XmlElement(name = "CoverStartDate", required = true)
protected XMLGregorianCalendar coverStartDate;

In my logic I have the following

xxxx.setCoverStartDate(xmlGregorianCalendar(theDate)

There is a method xmlGregorianCalendar which looks something like this:

GregorianCalendar gregorianCalendar = new GregorianCalendar();
gregorianCalendar.setTime(date);
return DatatypeFactory.newInstance().newXMLGregorianCalendar(gregorianCalendar);

My return XML that is generated, had the date with a time specified. I only want the date (year-month-day).

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Answer 1

Use DatatypeFactory.newXMLGregorianCalendarDate(...) instead of simply using any of the DatatypeFactory.newXMLGregorianCalendar(...) methods.

I don’t know what is theDate in your code snippet, however if you’re working with Date objects you can use the following.

  public static XMLGregorianCalendar setCoverStartDate(Date date) throws DatatypeConfigurationException {
    Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
    date.setTime(date.getTime());
    return DatatypeFactory.newInstance().newXMLGregorianCalendarDate(
        calendar.get(Calendar.YEAR),
        calendar.get(Calendar.MONTH) + 1,
        calendar.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH),
        getTimeZone(calendar));
  }

  public static int getTimeZone(Calendar calendar) {
    return (int) TimeUnit.MINUTES.convert(calendar.get(Calendar.ZONE_OFFSET), TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
  }

(Note that calendar's Calendar.ZONE_OFFSET is in milliseconds and the newXMLGregorianCalendarDate(...) method expects the timezone value in minutes, thus it needs to be converted.)

(Also note that Calendar's month index is 0-based, while XMLGregorianCalendar's month is 1-based.)

If this isn’t working then the XML schema you’ve used to generate your JAXB classes is probably erroneous: maybe it does not specify the usage of the xs:date XML schema type (probably it uses xs:dateTime instead).

Only one last advice: create your JAXB classes by hand. Then you can specify annotations like @XmlSchemaType on your classes’ fields giving you much more control.