XStream private attributes in Java

Question

How does XStream gets my object values since they are private?

import com.thoughtworks.xstream.XStream;

class Person {
    private String name;

    public Person(String n) {
        name = n;
    }
}

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        XStream stream = new XStream();

        Person p = new Person("Joe");
        String xml = stream.toXML(p);
        System.out.println(xml);
    }
}

and how do i highlight and indent my code in stackoverflow?

Answer 1

I don't know XStream, but they sure use the reflection API where you can disable the accessors (public, private, ...).

Answer 2

They do it by reflection. This way you can access even private members. For examples, look here.

Answer 3

How does XStream gets my object values since they are private?

It uses reflection. See the Converter listing for details on how XStream convers various java types

How do i highlight and indent my code in stackoverflow?

Highlight the text and press the code button that looks like 101010

Answer 4

With API reflection. You can get any field of a class with 'getDeclaredField' method, and then get the field's value