JAXB - Can XJC compile appinfo into the class structure?

Question

I have a schema which is read by a few different applications for form generation; one of them uses JAXB/XJC to compile its class structure. The schema contains appinfo information for friendly names of fields, eg:

<xs:element name="HomeAddress" type="xs:string">
  <xs:annotation>
    <xs:appinfo>Home address</xs:appinfo>
  </xs:annotation>
</xs:element>

Is there some way to get XJC to compile this information in?

Answer 1

You can use the Annotate plugin to add arbitrary Java annotations into your schema-derived classes. With this plugin you can manage a syntax like:

<xs:element name="HomeAddress" type="xs:string">
  <xs:annotation>
    <xs:appinfo>
      <ann:annotate xmlns:ann="http://annox.dev.java.net/com.acme.foo">
        <my:Label value="Home address"/>
      </ann:annotate>
    </xs:appinfo>
  </xs:annotation>
</xs:element>

An you'll get something like:

@Label("Home address") // FQCN is com.acme.foo.Label
public String getHomeAddress(...) {}