Writing JAXB in Groovy

Suppose you want write a jaxb class in groovy. Why? Because you do not have to write these all getters, setters and other methods. You only have to write your fields down.

@XmlRootElement 
@HashCodeAndEquals 
@ToString 
class Person {
    String firstName String lastName Integer age
}

Lets check if we could unmarshal xml to Person class:

def 'should unmarshall person xml to object'(){
    given:
        JAXBContext jc = JAXBContext.newInstance(Person)
        String xml = 'JohnSmith20' 
    expect:
        jc.createUnmarshaller().unmarshal(new StringReader(xml)) == new Person(firstName: 'John', lastName: 'Smith', age: 20)
}

When we try this, then we obtain an eception:

com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.IllegalAnnotationsException: 1 counts of IllegalAnnotationExceptions
groovy.lang.MetaClass is an interface, and JAXB can't handle interfaces.
 this problem is related to the following location:
  at groovy.lang.MetaClass
  at public groovy.lang.MetaClass com.blogspot.przybyszd.jaxbingroovy.Person.getMetaClass()
  at com.blogspot.przybyszd.jaxbingroovy.Person

 at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.IllegalAnnotationsException$Builder.check(IllegalAnnotationsException.java:91)
 at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl.getTypeInfoSet(JAXBContextImpl.java:445)
 at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl.(JAXBContextImpl.java:277)
 at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl.(JAXBContextImpl.java:124)
 at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl$JAXBContextBuilder.build(JAXBContextImpl.java:1123)
 at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.ContextFactory.createContext(ContextFactory.java:147)
 at javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder.newInstance(ContextFinder.java:247)
 at javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder.newInstance(ContextFinder.java:234)
 at javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder.find(ContextFinder.java:462)
 at javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext.newInstance(JAXBContext.java:641)
 at javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext.newInstance(JAXBContext.java:584)
 at com.blogspot.przybyszd.jaxbingroovy.PersonJaxbTest.should unmarshall person xml to object(PersonJaxbTest.groovy:10)

It is because groovy defines getMetaClass method for us. Marshaller and Unmarshaller use by default

XmlAccessType.PUBLIC_MEMBER what means that public getters and setters should be used during marshalling/unmarshalling. To solve this just add XmlAccessorType annotatnio with XmlAccessType.FIELD on jaxb class:

@XmlRootElement @EqualsAndHashCode @XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD) class Person {
    String firstName String lastName Integer age
}

Of course if you want to apply this rule for each jaxb class in package, then you could put XmlAccessorType in pacakge-info.java file.

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD) package com.blogspot.przybyszd.jaxbingroovy;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType;

Great, it works. Now let’s check out marshaller:

def 'should marshall person'() {
    given:
        JAXBContext jc = JAXBContext.newInstance(Person)
        Person p = new Person(firstName: 'John', lastName: 'Smith', age: 20)
        StringWriter sw = new StringWriter()
    when:
        jc.createMarshaller().marshal(p, sw)
    then:
        String xml = sw.toString()
        GPathResult gPathResult = new XmlSlurper().parseText(xml)
        gPathResult.name() == 'person'
        gPathResult.firstName == 'John'
        gPathResult.lastName == 'Smith'
        gPathResult.age == '20'
}

And it also works. Source is available here.

DDevelopment & Design

Grails render as JSON catch

byTomasz Kalkosiński
November 21, 2012

One of a reasons your controller doesn't render a proper response in JSON format might be wrong package name that you use. It is easy to overlook. Import are on top of a file, you look at your code and everything seems to be fine. Except response is still not in JSON format.

Consider this simple controller:

class RestJsonCatchController {
def grailsJson() {
render([first: 'foo', second: 5] as grails.converters.JSON)
    }

def netSfJson() {
render([first: 'foo', second: 5] as net.sf.json.JSON)
    }
}

And now, with finger crossed... We have a winner!

$ curl localhost:8080/example/restJsonCatch/grailsJson
{"first":"foo","second":5}
$ curl localhost:8080/example/restJsonCatch/netSfJson
{first=foo, second=5}

As you can see only grails.converters.JSON converts your response to JSON format. There is no such converter for net.sf.json.JSON, so Grails has no converter to apply and it renders Map normally.

Conclusion: always carefully look at your imports if you're working with JSON in Grails!

Edit: Burt suggested that this is a bug. I've submitted JIRA issue here: GRAILS-9622 render as class that is not a codec should throw exception

Writing JAXB in Groovy

Tags:

Dominik Przybysz

Restart or power off Rasperry PI with REST call

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Grails render as JSON catch

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Writing JAXB in Groovy

Tags:

Dominik Przybysz

Restart or power off Rasperry PI with REST call

Groovy, Callable and ExecutorService

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