Simple XML deserialization

Question

I am trying out the Simple XML serializer. I am more interested in deserialization from XML->Java. Here is my code as a unit test:

import java.io.StringReader;
import java.io.StringWriter;

import junit.framework.TestCase;

import org.simpleframework.xml.Attribute;
import org.simpleframework.xml.Root;
import org.simpleframework.xml.Serializer;
import org.simpleframework.xml.core.Persister;

public class SimpleTest extends TestCase {
    public void testWriting() throws Exception {
     StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
     Address address = new Address("1234 Main Street", "San Francisco", "CA");
     Serializer serializer = new Persister();

     serializer.write(address, writer);
     System.out.println("Wrote: " + writer.getBuffer());
    }

    public void testReading() throws Exception {
     String input = "<address street='1234 Main Street' city='San Francisco' state='CA'/>";
     Serializer serializer = new Persister();
     System.out.println("Read back: " + serializer.read(Address.class, new StringReader(input)));
    }
}

@Root
class Address {
    @Attribute(name="street")
    private final String street;

    @Attribute(name="city")
    private final String city;

    @Attribute(name="state")
    private final String state;

    public Address(@Attribute(name="street") String street, @Attribute(name="city") String city, @Attribute(name="state") String state) {
     super();
     this.street = street;
     this.city = city;
     this.state = state;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
     return "Address [city=" + city + ", state=" + state + ", street=" + street + "]";
    } 
}

This works, but the repeated @Attribute annotations (at the field and at the constructor argument) in the Address class look ugly. Is there some way to:

• have simple figure out the attribute name from the field name?
• have simple ignore serialization, so that I can get away with annotating either the fields or the constructor argument?

Answer 1

I don't think you need all that repetition and the extra annotations' attribute. If the name is the same as the object attribute, it will be used by default.

so you can just declare it as:

@Root
class Address {
    @Attribute
    private final String street;

    @Attribute
    private final String city;

    @Attribute
    private final String state;

    public Address(String street, String city, String state) {
        super();
        this.street = street;
        this.city = city;
       this.state = state;
   }

   @Override
   public String toString() {
      return "Address [city=" + city + ", state=" + state + ", street=" + street + "]";
   }   
}

Answer 2

Java will serialize all of your class members by default if they implement Serializable and adhere to the JavaBean syntax.