How to use jaxp 3 with jdk 1.6?

Question

I'm trying to migrate application from jdk 1.5 to jdk 1.6 without introducing any changes visible to the end user. Application's output is an xml generated using jaxp which is a part of the jdk libraries. Since jaxp versions are different in jdk 1.5 and 1.6, the resulting xml looks different in each version.

An example: DatatypeFatory.newInstance().newDuration(60) produces 'PT2H17M0.000S' in jdk 1.5 and 'P0Y0M0DT2H17M0.000S' in jdk 1.6. Both are correct, but i want to avoid any visible changes.

Classes like DatatypeFactory have a mechanism which allows specifying which implementation should be used, but it relies on specifying full qualified class name. So theoretically i could download jaxp jars with the same version which is used in jdk 1.5 and let the application use them. Unfortunately the package and class names are the same in both versions, so i would have to somehow tell java to load classes from jar and not jdk. I was trying to put jaxp jars at the beginning of the classpath, but it didn't help.

Is it possible to tell java to load classes from external jar and not jdk libraries? Can i solve this problem in any other way?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Here are instructions for that. They focus on going to newer versions, but it is the same idea. Basically you put the old version in the endorsed directory, which will indicate to the JDK that you intend to use a different version from what is built in.