Help in XML

[ims6674]

Hi,

I am new to XML and as my first assignment I got a task to generate a XML file. I am able to generate it with a lengthy procedure, however I want it to generate in generic way.

Could you please help me?

Thanks,
Imran.

[levent]

Hi Imran,

Can you give more details about your problem/solution. What do you mean with lengthy procedure?

If you can describe your problem more, we can help. You can paste your source code and XML sample too if they will help us understand your problem.

[pegitha]

Jaxb is a great package for generating xml files. I put some sample code below. But, it depends on exactly how you are obtaining the data to put into your xml file. If you do not have the data anyplace you are going to have to enter it, maybe in a database , then use jaxb to format it into xml files. Anyway, maybe you can explain in detail what you are doing so we can offer specific help.
Here is some generic jaxb code:

Code:

JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(MyBean.class);
Marshaller marshaller = jaxbContext.createMarshaller();
marshaller.setProperty("jaxb.formatted.output",new Boolean(true)); 
//gather data method would be here, fill in your beans		
File xml = new File(baseDir, "myXMLFIle.xml");
marshaller.marshal( listOfBeans, new FileOutputStream(xml));

[ims6674]

Hi,
Thanks for your reply.

I have to generate a xml file which includes 45-50 tag elements depending upon the user's input i.e. dynamically. Few of them are having child nodes.

I am able to generate this file by writting each and every tag element, adding its attribute if present then adding the text node.

I want to ask, Is there any way so that I can generalize my code by
calling any method so that to reduce the code length?

I was also able to write one method, to which I am passing the tag element and its text node value, however it fails if that tag element is having some child nodes.

Could you please find some solution to this?

Thanks,
Imran.

[levent]

Hi Imran,

I did not use XStream, but as far as i see you can create an object, set its fields based on user input and serialize it to XML with XStream. I guess it will have less numbers of lines and easier to maintain compared to manual serialization.

As far as i see, it is also possible to do this with JAXB. Check following tech tip:

Object Serialization with the JAXB Libraries and Revisiting Timers with Enterprise Beans Tech Tips