RESTEasy XML marshalling and unmarshalling examples

Venkat Nandanavanam
Many enterprise applications use Marshalling and unmarshalling i.e. XML to POJO and POJO to XML. This tutorial will try show how to do Marshalling and unmarshalling using JAXB and RESTEasy.
Technologies used

1. JAVA
2. RESTEasy
3. JAXB
4. JBOSS eap 6.1
5. Maven

As an example let us try to convert XML to Java object and Java object to XML. This is how our simple order.xml looks like
 

Mumbai

300

f238
OR908765

Now let us declare our domain objects to represent this XML
order.java
 

package itsvenkis.blogspot.in.domain;

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

/**
 * @author itsvenkis
 *
 */
@XmlRootElement(name ="order")
public class Order {
 
 private String flightNumber;
 private String orderId;
 private String source;
 private String destination;
 private Flight flight;
 
 public Flight getFlight() {
  return flight;
 }
 
 @XmlElement
 public void setFlight(Flight flight) {
  this.flight = flight;
 }

 public String getFlightNumber() {
  return flightNumber;
 }
 
 @XmlElement
 public void setFlightNumber(String flightNumber) {
  this.flightNumber = flightNumber;
 }
 public String getOrderId() {
  return orderId;
 }
 @XmlElement
 public void setOrderId(String orderId) {
  this.orderId = orderId;
 }
 public String getSource() {
  return source;
 }
 @XmlElement
 public void setSource(String source) {
  this.source = source;
 }
 public String getDestination() {
  return destination;
 }
 @XmlElement
 public void setDestination(String destination) {
  this.destination = destination;
 }
}

Flight.java

package itsvenkis.blogspot.in.domain;

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

/**
 * @author itsvenkis
 *
 */
public class Flight {
 
 private String flightMaker;
 private String flightType;
 private int flightAge;
 
 public int getFlightAge() {
  return flightAge;
 }
 
 @XmlElement
 public void setFlightAge(int flightAge) {
  this.flightAge = flightAge;
 }
 @XmlAttribute
 public String getFlightMaker() {
  return flightMaker;
 }
 public void setFlightMaker(String flightMaker) {
  this.flightMaker = flightMaker;
 }
 
 @XmlAttribute
 public String getFlightType() {
  return flightType;
 }
 public void setFlightType(String flightType) {
  this.flightType = flightType;
 }
}

Now this is how our RESTEasy service class will look like OrderSrvc.java

package itsvenkis.blogspot.in.rest.services;

import itsvenkis.blogspot.in.domain.Flight;
import itsvenkis.blogspot.in.domain.Order;

import javax.ws.rs.Consumes;
import javax.ws.rs.GET;
import javax.ws.rs.POST;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;
import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

@Path("/getOrder")
public class OrderSrvc {
 
 @GET
 @Produces("application/xml")
 public Order getOrder(){
  Order order = new Order();
  order.setDestination("Mumbai");
  order.setFlightNumber("f238");
  order.setOrderId("OR908765");
  Flight flight = new Flight();
  flight.setFlightMaker("BOEING");
  flight.setFlightType("COMMERCIAL");
  flight.setFlightAge(300);
  order.setFlight(flight);
  return order;
 }
 
 @POST
 @Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML)
 public Response postOrder(Order order){
                //Its crime to use System.out.println . Use loggers instead
  System.out.println(order.getDestination());
  return Response.status(200).entity("Received XML").build();
 }

}

Now lets go ahead and define our web.xml and pom.xml
web.xml

 
  resteasy.resources
  itsvenkis.blogspot.in.rest.services.OrderSrvc
 
 
  resteasy.servlet.mapping.prefix
  /resteasy
 
 
  
   org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.ResteasyBootstrap
 
 
  resteasy
  
   org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServletDispatcher
 
 
  resteasy
  /resteasy/*
 

pom.xml

  4.0.0
  in.itsvenkis.blogspot
  flight-booking
  0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
  war
  JBOSS-EXAMPLES
  Simple application to understand RESTEasy,Hornet Q
  
   
      jboss
      http://repository.jboss.org/maven2
   
   
   
   flightbooking
   
   
   
    org.jboss.resteasy
    resteasy-jaxrs
    3.0.0.Final
   
   
 org.jboss.resteasy
 resteasy-jaxb-provider
 3.0.0.Final
 
  

Now biuld, deploy and start the server

After starting the server, try this URL

Now lets try to convert XML to Java object. I used REST client firefox plugin to post XML. Do remember to add request header for content type before posting XML

This brings us to the end of the tutorial. I will post more examples on RestEasy, HornetQ, and JBOSS in the future. If you want any specific tutorial let me know in the comments section.
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