How do you specify the date format used when JAXB marshals xsd:dateTime?

Question

When JAXB marshals a date object (XMLGregorianCalendar) into an xsd:dateTime element. How can you specify the format of the resulting XML?

For example: The default data format uses milliseconds <StartDate>2012-08-21T13:21:58.000Z</StartDate> I need to omit the milliseconds. <StartDate>2012-08-21T13:21:58Z</StartDate>

How can I specify the output form/date format that I want it to use? I'm using javax.xml.datatype.DatatypeFactory to create the XMLGregorianCalendar object.

XMLGregorianCalendar xmlCal = datatypeFactory.newXMLGregorianCalendar(cal); 

Answer 1

You can use an XmlAdapter to customize how a date type is written to XML.

package com.example;  import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.Date;  import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlAdapter;  public class DateAdapter extends XmlAdapter<String, Date> {      private final SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");      @Override     public String marshal(Date v) throws Exception {         synchronized (dateFormat) {             return dateFormat.format(v);         }     }      @Override     public Date unmarshal(String v) throws Exception {         synchronized (dateFormat) {             return dateFormat.parse(v);         }     }  } 

Then you use the @XmlJavaTypeAdapter annotation to specify that the XmlAdapter should be used for a specific field/property.

@XmlElement(name = "timestamp", required = true)  @XmlJavaTypeAdapter(DateAdapter.class) protected Date timestamp;  

Using a xjb binding file:

<xjc:javaType name="java.util.Date" xmlType="xs:dateTime"         adapter="com.example.DateAdapter"/> 

will produce the above mentioned annotation.
(By eventually adding the xjc namespace: xmlns:xjc="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/jaxb/xjc")

Answer 2

I use a SimpleDateFormat to create the XMLGregorianCalendar, such as in this example:

public static XMLGregorianCalendar getXmlDate(Date date) throws DatatypeConfigurationException {     return DatatypeFactory.newInstance().newXMLGregorianCalendar(new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd").format(date)); }  public static XMLGregorianCalendar getXmlDateTime(Date date) throws DatatypeConfigurationException {     return DatatypeFactory.newInstance().newXMLGregorianCalendar(new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss").format(date)); } 

The first method creates an instance of XMLGregorianCalendar that is formatted by the XML marshaller as a valid xsd:date, the second method results in a valid xsd:dateTime.