Spring 3 MVC And XML Example

In Spring 3, one of the feature of “mvc:annotation-driven“, is support for convert object to/from XML file, if JAXB is in project classpath.

In this tutorial, we show you how to convert a return object into XML format and return it back to user via Spring @MVC framework.

Technologies used :

Spring 3.0.5.RELEASE

JDK 1.6

Eclipse 3.6

Maven 3

JAXB in JDK6

JAXB is included in JDK6, so, you do not need to include JAXB library manually, as long as object is annotated with JAXB annotation, Spring will convert it into XML format automatically.

2. Model + JAXB

A simple POJO model and annotated with JAXB annotation, later convert this object into XML output.

package com.mkyong.common.model;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement(name = "coffee")

public class Coffee {

String name;

int quanlity;

public String getName() {

return name;

}

@XmlElement

public void setName(String name) {

this.name = name;

}

public int getQuanlity() {

return quanlity;

}

@XmlElement

public void setQuanlity(int quanlity) {

this.quanlity = quanlity;

}

public Coffee(String name, int quanlity) {

this.name = name;

this.quanlity = quanlity;

}

public Coffee() {

}

}

3. Controller

Add “@ResponseBody” in the method return value, no much detail in the Spring documentation.

As i know, when Spring see

Object annotated with JAXB

JAXB library existed in classpath

“mvc:annotation-driven” is enabled

Return method annotated with @ResponseBody

It will handle the conversion automatically.

package com.mkyong.common.controller;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PathVariable;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;

import com.mkyong.common.model.Coffee;

@Controller

@RequestMapping("/coffee")

public class XMLController {

@RequestMapping(value="{name}", method = RequestMethod.GET)

public @ResponseBody Coffee getCoffeeInXML(@PathVariable String name) {

Coffee coffee = new Coffee(name, 100);

return coffee;

}

}

4. mvc:annotation-driven

In one of your Spring configuration XML file, enable “

mvc:annotation-driven

“.

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"

xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"

xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd">
<context:component-scan base-package="com.mkyong.common.controller" />

<mvc:annotation-driven />

</beans>

Note

Alternatively, you can declares “spring-oxm.jar” dependency and include following

MarshallingView

, to handle the conversion. With this method, you don’t need annotate @ResponseBody in your method.

<beans ...>

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.BeanNameViewResolver" />

<bean id="xmlViewer"

class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.xml.MarshallingView">

<constructor-arg>

<bean class="org.springframework.oxm.jaxb.Jaxb2Marshaller">

<property name="classesToBeBound">

<list>

<value>com.mkyong.common.model.Coffee</value>

</list>

</property>

</bean>

</constructor-arg>

</bean>
</beans>

5. Demo

URL : http://localhost:8080/SpringMVC/rest/coffee/arabica

Download Source Code

Download it – SpringMVC-XML-Example.zip (7 KB)