Even though I've been a developer for awhile I've been lucky enough to have avoided doing much work with XML. So now I've got a project where I've got to interact with some web services, and would like to use some kind of Object-to-XML Mapping solution.
The only one I'm aware of is JAXB. Is that the best to go with? Are there any other recommendations?
One catch - I'm stuck using Java 1.4, so I can't do anything with annotations.
There's XStream. I seem to remember I used that ages ago, and it was fine. Can't say I have enough experience to recommend it for or against, but it's worth checking out just as an alternative.
If you're calling a web-service with a WSDL, JAXB is absolutely the best option. Take a look at wsimport, and you're be up and running in 10 minutes.
I don't think JAXB 2.0 will be possible on Java 1.4. You may need to use Axis instead:
java -cp axis-1.4.jar;commons-logging-1.1.jar;commons-discovery-0.2.jar;jaxrpc-1.1.jar;saaj-1.1.jar;wsdl4j-1.4.jar;activation-1.1.jar;mail-1.4.jar org.apache.axis.wsdl.WSDL2Java http://someurl?WSDL
This will generate similar stubs to JAXB.
If you don't have a WSDL or XSD, you can always generate one.
JIBX - known for performance
JAXB2 - Ease of use
Castor - Ease of use
others - XMLBean, Xstream
JAXB is the best choice:
EclipseLink JAXB (MOXy) is the best implementation:
MOXy is a JAXB implementation with Extensions
MOXy has an external configuration file (based on JAXB annotations with extensions):
Has XPath based mapping, for deep mapping:
Designed to handle ORM mapped objects, including support for bidirectional relationships: