JAXB unmarshalling not working properly

Question

Im trying to use JAXB to Convert XML to Object, my XML look like this:

<entityResource>
   <Item xsi:type="objectPermissionImpl">
      <permissionMask>0</permissionMask>
      <permissionRecipient xsi:type="roleImpl">
        <externallyDefined>false</externallyDefined>
        <roleName>ROLE_USER</roleName>
      </permissionRecipient>
      <URI>repo:/public/adhoc/topics/JSDiagnosticTopic</URI>
   </Item>
   <Item xsi:type="objectPermissionImpl">
      <permissionMask>0</permissionMask>
      <permissionRecipient xsi:type="roleImpl">
        <externallyDefined>false</externallyDefined>
        <roleName>ROLE_ADMINISTRATOR</roleName>
      </permissionRecipient>
      <URI>repo:/public/adhoc/topics/JSDiagnosticTopic</URI>
   </Item>
</entityResource>

So i created 3 java classes : EntityResource.java, Item.java and PermissionRecipient.java as shown bellow:

EntityResource.java

import java.util.List;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement(name="entityResource")
public class EntityResource {

    List<Item> ls_Item;

    public EntityResource() {
    }

    public List<Item> getLs_Item() {
        return ls_Item;
    }

    @XmlElement(name="Item")
    public void setLs_Item(List<Item> ls_Item) {
        this.ls_Item = ls_Item;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "EntityResource [ls_Item=" + ls_Item + "]";
    }

}

Item.java

package model;

import java.util.List;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement(name="Item")
public class Item {

    int permissionMask;
    List<PermissionRecipient> ls_permissionRecipient;
    String URI;

    public Item() {

    }

    public int getPermissionMask() {
        return permissionMask;
    }

    @XmlElement(name="permissionMask")
    public void setPermissionMask(int permissionMask) {
        this.permissionMask = permissionMask;
    }

    public List<PermissionRecipient> getLs_permissionRecipient() {
        return ls_permissionRecipient;
    }

    @XmlElement(name="permissionRecipient")
    public void setLs_permissionRecipient(
            List<PermissionRecipient> ls_permissionRecipient) {
        this.ls_permissionRecipient = ls_permissionRecipient;
    }

    public String getURI() {
        return URI;
    }

    @XmlElement(name="URI")
    public void setURI(String uRI) {
        URI = uRI;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "Item [permissionMask=" + permissionMask
                + ", ls_permissionRecipient=" + ls_permissionRecipient
                + ", URI=" + URI + "]";
    }





}

PermissionRecipient.java

package model;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAttribute;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement(name="permissionRecipient")
public class PermissionRecipient {

    String roleName;
    boolean externallyDefined;

    public PermissionRecipient() {

    }

    public boolean isExternallyDefined() {
        return externallyDefined;
    }

    @XmlAttribute(name="externallyDefined")
    public void setExternallyDefined(boolean externallyDefined) {
        this.externallyDefined = externallyDefined;
    }

    public String getRoleName() {
        return roleName;
    }

    @XmlAttribute(name="roleName")
    public void setRoleName(String rolename) {
        this.roleName = rolename;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "PermissionRecipient [externallyDefined=" + externallyDefined
                + ", roleName=" + roleName + "]";
    }


}

All worked and i got an EntityResource object contain the Item but the permissionRecipient attribute of the Item attribute of EntityResource doesnt contain his attributes (roleName and externallyDefined) !

My unmarshalling code is here:

JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext
                    .newInstance(EntityResource.class);
            Unmarshaller jaxbUnmarshaller = jaxbContext.createUnmarshaller();
            EntityResource resourceDescriptors = (EntityResource) jaxbUnmarshaller
                    .unmarshal(conn.getInputStream());// conn is an HttpURLConnection

The toString() function of Item returned this results:

[Item 
[permissionMask=0, 
permissionRecipient=PermissionRecipient [externallyDefined=false, roleName=null], 
URI=repo:/public/adhoc/topics/JSDiagnosticTopic], 

Item 
[permissionMask=0, 
permissionRecipient=PermissionRecipient [externallyDefined=false, roleName=null], 
URI=repo:/public/adhoc/topics/JSDiagnosticTopic]]

as u can mark, [externallyDefined=false, roleName=null] in each Item, why ? what mistake i have macked ? Thanks if anyone here can help me solve it, best regards.

Answer 1

In our case we figured a different issue i.e. we had an xml tag like

<tag></tag> 

and defined a java class with name Tag. Later when we try to use it in java we declared the variable like below

Tag tag; //didn't worked

and Java class as below

@XmlRootElement(name = "Tag")
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
@XmlType(name = "Tag", propOrder = {

})
public class Tag{}

and un-marshalling was not working and not loading the values. We changed the variable name from 'tag' to 'Tag' and Bingo! it worked.

Tag Tag; //worked

Another similar situation we had tag name like

<tagNew></tagNew>

Java class as TagNew and variable name was tagNew and it worked fine.

@XmlRootElement(name = "TagNew")
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
@XmlType(name = "TagNew", propOrder = {

})
public class TagNew{}

TagNew tagNew; // worked fine

May be still something for us to learn! that how JaxB works with naming conventions.

Answer 2

You have roleName and externallyDefined mapped with @XmlAttribute instead of @XmlElement.

Debugging Tip

When your object model doesn't unmarshal as expected, populate it and marshal it to XML, then compare the output with your input.