EclipseLink MOXy: Suppress xsi:type when marshalling

Question

I have a bindings file with the following content:

<java-type name="JavaType">
  <xml-root-element name="root"/>
  <java-attributes>
    ...
  </java-attributes>
</java-type>

When I marshall the JavaType class using this binding, the XML looks like this

<root xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:type="JavaType">

I don't want the xsi:type to be there, how can I suppress this when marshalling?

Answer 1

The xsi:type attribute will appear when you are marshalling a subclass. You can have it be suppressed by wrapping your object in a JAXBElement that supplies information about the root element including type.

JAXBElement<JavaType> je = new JAXBElement(new QName(), JavaType.class javaType);
marshaller.marshal(je, System.out); 

Example

• Is there a possibility to hide the "@type" entry when marshalling subclasses to JSON using EclipseLink MOXy (JAXB)?

---

UPDATE

Thanks. I now made the superclass XmlTransient, which makes the xsi:type disapear as well. I used the annotation to do that. Is there actually a way to use to make a java-type be transient? I could only make it work for java-attributes.

You are correct. You can use @XmlTransient at the class level to have it removed from the inheritance hierarchy. Below is how this can be done using MOXy's external mapping document.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xml-bindings 
    xmlns="http://www.eclipse.org/eclipselink/xsds/persistence/oxm" 
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    package-name="com.example.foo">
     <java-types>
        <java-type name="Foo" xml-transient="true"></java-type>
     </java-types>
</xml-bindings>

For More Information

• http://blog.bdoughan.com/2011/06/ignoring-inheritance-with-xmltransient.html

Answer 2

I tried @blaise-doughan's suggestion and added the @XmlTransient annotation to top of my abstract base class.

With my environment (so my product depends something strictly), the jaxb-api library says "The annotation @XmlTransient is disallowed for this location" because of the version of it high probably older than 2.1. I realized that when I tried to adding the annotation with a new test class-path which contains version >=2.1, so it allows to defining it top of a class.

So let me get straight to the point, I suggest below method in order to get rid of the type fields which appears on responses which are building and marshaling from extended classes.

I only added @XmlDiscriminatorNode("") to top of my base class and I supposed that you are using the EclipseLink MOXy:

import org.eclipse.persistence.oxm.annotations.XmlDiscriminatorNode;

@XmlDiscriminatorNode("")
public abstract class Base {

    private int id;

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

}

As a summary you can use @XmlTransient if you have the jaxb-api version greater than 2.1 or use my method if you have EclipseLink MOXy.