How to deal with JAXB ComplexType with MixedContent data?

Question

I got this XML structure:

<Tax>
  <Money currency="USD">0.00</Money>
  <Description xml:lang="en">
     17.5% Non-Recoverable
    <ShortName>vatspecial</ShortName>
  </Description>
</Tax>

Notice that Description node has MixedContent (composed with text and XML) and this is the XSD part regarding Description node:

<xsd:complexType name="TaxDescriptionType">
  <xsd:sequence>
    <xsd:element name="ShortName" type="xsd:string" />
  </xsd:sequence>
  <xsd:attribute ref="xml:lang" />
</xsd:complexType>

Everything is ok at this point, XJC outputs the generated classes like this one regarding TaxDescriptionType:

package org.com.project;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAttribute;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlSchemaType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.CollapsedStringAdapter;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlJavaTypeAdapter;

/**
 * <p>Java class for TaxDescriptionType complex type.
 * 
 * <p>The following schema fragment specifies the expected content contained within this class.
 * 
 * <pre>
 * &lt;complexType name="TaxDescriptionType">
 *   &lt;complexContent>
 *     &lt;restriction base="{http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema}anyType">
 *       &lt;sequence>
 *         &lt;element name="ShortName" type="{http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema}string"/>
 *       &lt;/sequence>
 *       &lt;attribute ref="{http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace}lang"/>
 *     &lt;/restriction>
 *   &lt;/complexContent>
 * &lt;/complexType>
 * </pre>
 * 
 * 
 */
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
@XmlType(name = "TaxDescriptionType", propOrder = {
    "shortName"
})
public class TaxDescriptionType {

    @XmlElement(name = "ShortName", required = true)
    protected String shortName;
    @XmlAttribute(name = "lang", namespace = "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace")
    @XmlJavaTypeAdapter(CollapsedStringAdapter.class)
    @XmlSchemaType(name = "NCName")
    protected String lang;

    /**
     * Gets the value of the shortName property.
     * 
     * @return
     *     possible object is
     *     {@link String }
     *     
     */
    public String getShortName() {
        return shortName;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the value of the shortName property.
     * 
     * @param value
     *     allowed object is
     *     {@link String }
     *     
     */
    public void setShortName(String value) {
        this.shortName = value;
    }

    /**
     * Gets the value of the lang property.
     * 
     * @return
     *     possible object is
     *     {@link String }
     *     
     */
    public String getLang() {
        return lang;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the value of the lang property.
     * 
     * @param value
     *     allowed object is
     *     {@link String }
     *     
     */
    public void setLang(String value) {
        this.lang = value;
    }

}

Then, with the above class I am able to work around with the elements like this:

taxDescriptionType.setLang("en");
taxDescriptionType.setShortName("vatspecial");
/* missing value: 17.5% Non-Recoverable */

But the problem is that I can't found a way to get or set the 17.5% Non-Recoverable text of the MixedContent-ComplexType from the above XML example.

---

This is what I tried and it's not working:

• Used mixed="true" attribute like this:

<xsd:complexType name="TaxDescriptionType" mixed="true">

(I think XJC is ignoring the last attribute)

---

Doing some research, I found this:

JAXB XJC compiler disregarding mixed=true on XML Schema documents

But I am not sure if this is the way to solve this. One of the answers said that this is a bug and in the other one shows a code that transforms the MixedContent into a List<Serializable> and maybe the next situation will be about how to deal with this:

taxDescriptionType.getContent().add(Serializable element);

(And I really don't know how to deal with a Serializable element)

Answer 1

As you mentioned you need to add the mixed attribute to indicate that your type supports mixed content. Without this specified your XML content is invalid:

<xsd:complexType name="TaxDescriptionType" mixed="true">
    <xsd:sequence>
        <xsd:element name="ShortName" type="xsd:string" />
    </xsd:sequence>
    <xsd:attribute ref="xml:lang" />
</xsd:complexType>

The generated TaxDescriptionType class will have the following property. Essentially this means that all of the non-attribute content will be stored in a List. This is necessary because you need a mechanism that indicates where the text nodes are wrt the element content.

@XmlElementRef(name = "ShortName", namespace = "http://www.example.org/schema", type = JAXBElement.class)
@XmlMixed
protected List<Serializable> content;

You will populate this list with instances of String (representing text nodes) and JAXBElement (representing element content).

---

ALTERNATIVELY

Mixed content generally makes life more complicated than it needs to be. If possible I would recommend an alternate XML representation.

<Tax>
  <Money currency="USD">0.00</Money>
  <Description xml:lang="en" ShortName="vatspecial">
    17.5% Non-Recoverable
  </Description>
</Tax>

Or

<Tax>
  <Money currency="USD">0.00</Money>
  <Description xml:lang="en">
    <LongName>17.5% Non-Recoverable</LongName>
    <ShortName>vatspecial</ShortName>
  </Description>
</Tax>