How to change programmatically the default JAXB date serialization?

Question

Is there a way to change the default way jaxb serialize/deserialize types, dates in my case, without specifying it through annotation and/or through xml jaxb binding as mentioned here http://jaxb.java.net/guide/Using_different_datatypes.html

I'd basically like to do something like:

    JAXBContext jaxbContext = ...;
    Marshaller marshaller = jaxbContext.createMarshaller().setAdapter(new DateAdapter(dateFormat));

To have a preconfigured JaxBContext or Marshaller/Unmarshaller that serialize/deserialize dates in a customized way..

Couldn't find any resource that shows how to do expect through annotations or statically with the xml binding file.. Thanks!

Answer 1

This isn't exactly what you're looking for but it beats annotating every Date field individually. You can set a XmlJavaTypeAdapter at the package level so that every reference to Date within your package will use it. If your objects are in the com.example package, you should add a package-info.java file to it with the following contents:

@XmlJavaTypeAdapter(value=MyCustomDateAdapter.class,type=Date.class)
package com.example;

Answer 2

Try this:

import javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext;
import javax.xml.bind.Marshaller;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlAdapter;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlJavaTypeAdapter;

@XmlRootElement(name = "event")
public class Event {

    private Date date;
    private String description;

    @XmlJavaTypeAdapter(DateFormatterAdapter.class)
    public Date getDate() {
        return date;
    }

    public void setDate(final Date date) {
        this.date = date;
    }

    public String getDescription() {
        return description;
    }

    public void setDescription(final String description) {
        this.description = description;
    }

    private static class DateFormatterAdapter extends XmlAdapter<String, Date> {
        private final SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd_mm_yyyy");

        @Override
        public Date unmarshal(final String v) throws Exception {
            return dateFormat.parse(v);
        }

        @Override
        public String marshal(final Date v) throws Exception {
            return dateFormat.format(v);
        }
    }

    public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception {
        final JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance(Event.class);
        final Marshaller marshaller = context.createMarshaller();
        marshaller.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, true);

        final Event event = new Event();
        event.setDate(new Date());
        event.setDescription("im rick james");

        marshaller.marshal(event, System.out);
    }
}

This produces:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<event>
    <date>16_05_2011</date>
    <description>im rick james</description>
</event>