Deserialize inline elementlist directly into a List

Question

I have the following XML structure:

<keys>
   <key>
      <tag>
         someValue
      </tag>
   </key>
   <key>
      <tag>
         someValue
      </tag>
   </key>
</keys>

The key element is represented in code in the following class:

public class Key {

    @Element(name = "tag")
    private String tag;
}

My goal is to deserialize these directly into a List, something like this:

Serializer serializer = new Persister();
List<Key> list = serializer.read(Key.class, inputStream); // pseudo code

How can i achieve this with Simple?

Answer 1

Use the @ElementList annotation like so

@Root(name="keys")
public class KeyList {

    @ElementList(inline=true, entry="key")
    private List<Key> keys;

    public List<Key> getKeys() {
       return keys;
    }
}

Then

Persister persister = new Persister();
List<Key> keys = persister.read(KeyList.class, source).getKeys();

Answer 2

I would recommend using JAXB (Java Architecture for XML Binding)

Here's a link to a couple of tutorials:

• http://jaxb.java.net/tutorial/

• opentutorials: jaxb into a list

They can explain it better than me. But basically you use annotations defined in the javax.xml.bind.annotation package which define your xml structure. Then create a simple JAXB Handler class to handle marshaling and unmarshaling.