XStream is a simple java library to serialize objects to XML and back again.

Create classes to be serialized


public class Contact {
 
    private String name;
 
    private List<Address> addresses;
 
    public Contact(String name, Address... addresses) {
        this.name = name;
        this.addresses = new ArrayList<Address>(Arrays.asList(addresses));
    }
 
    public Contact(String name, List<Address> addresses) {
        this.name = name;
        this.addresses = addresses;
    }
 
    // ... other constructors and methods
}


public class Address {
 
    private String street;
    private String city;
 
    public Address(String street, String city) {
        this.street = street;
        this.city = city;
    }
 
    // ... other constructors and methods
}

XStream doesn’t care about the visibility of the fields. No getters or setters are needed. Also, XStream does not limit you to having a default constructor.

Initializing XStream

XStream xStream = new XStream();

In this case you require in the classpath XPP3, a very fast XML pull-parser implementation. If you do not want to include these dependencies, you can use a standard JAXP DOM parser:

// does not require XPP3 library
XStream xStream = new XStream(new DomDriver());

or since Java 6 the integrated StAX parser instead:

// does not require XPP3 library starting with Java 6
XStream xStream = new XStream(new StaxDriver());

To make the XML more concise, you can create aliases for your custom class names to XML element names:

xStream.alias("contact", Contact.class);
xStream.alias("address", Address.class);

Serializing an object to XML

Create the object:


Address address1 = new Address("My Street", "Bucharest");
Address address2 = new Address("Another Street", "Bucharest");

Contact contact = new Contact("Cristian Sulea", address1, address2);

Convert the object to XML:

String xml = xStream.toXML(contact);

The resulting XML is:

<contact>
    <name>Cristian Sulea</name>
    <addresses>
        <address>
            <street>My Street</street>
            <city>Bucharest</city>
        </address>
        <address>
            <street>Another Street</street>
            <city>Bucharest</city>
        </address>
    </addresses>
</contact>

Deserializing an object back from XML

Contact contact = (Contact) xStream.fromXML(xml);

Putting It All Together

All the code in a single class to make’it easier to copy/paste/run and then play with the code.


package xstream.tutorial;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

import com.thoughtworks.xstream.XStream;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.DomDriver;

public class XStreamTutorial {

  public static void main(String[] args) {

    XStream xStream = new XStream(new DomDriver());

    xStream.alias("contact", Contact.class);
    xStream.alias("address", Address.class);

    Address address1 = new Address("My Street", "Bucharest");
    Address address2 = new Address("Another Street", "Bucharest");

    Contact contact = new Contact("Cristian Sulea", address1, address2);

    xStream.toXML(contact, System.out);
  }

  public static class Contact {

    private String name;

    private List<Address> addresses;

    public Contact(String name, Address... addresses) {
      this.name = name;
      this.addresses = new ArrayList<Address>(Arrays.asList(addresses));
    }

    public Contact(String name, List<Address> addresses) {
      this.name = name;
      this.addresses = addresses;
    }

    public String getName() {
      return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
      this.name = name;
    }

    public List<Address> getAddresses() {
      return addresses;
    }

    public void setAddresses(List<Address> addresses) {
      this.addresses = addresses;
    }
  }

  public static class Address {

    private String street;
    private String city;

    public Address(String street, String city) {
      this.street = street;
      this.city = city;
    }

    public String getStreet() {
      return street;
    }

    public void setStreet(String street) {
      this.street = street;
    }

    public String getCity() {
      return city;
    }

    public void setCity(String city) {
      this.city = city;
    }
  }
}

Categories & Tags

Related

Share