Java: Marshalling in Java

Marshalling is a technique that can be easily understood and utilized efficiently. IT is the process of converting a POJO(Plain Old Java Object) in memory into a format that can be written to disk or send via network, usually in text formats like xml or json. The reverse of this technique is called unmarshalling.

Difference between Marshalling and Serialization:

Marshalling is similar to Serialization in practice but the difference is that, Marshalling also saves the code of an object in addition to its state.

Example

In the following example to explain marshalling, standard JAXB(Java Architecture for XML Binding) is used. For marshalling an object using JAXB, it must have annotation for the root element - @XmlRootElement

 
package blog.warfox.tutorials.marshalling;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

/**
 * Student class for Marshalling demo example
 * @author warfox
 */
@XmlRootElement(name="student")

public class Student {

     private String name;
     private int rollNo;
     private double marks;
     private int rank;

     public String getName() {
          return this.name;
     }

     public void setName(String name) {
          this.name = name;
     }

     public int getRollNo() {
          return this.rollNo;
     }

     public void setRollNo(int rollNo) {
          this.rollNo = rollNo;
     }

     public double getMarks() {
          return this.marks;
     }

     public void setMarks(double marks) {
          this.marks = marks;
     }

     public int getRank() {
          return this.rank;
     }

     public void setRank(int rank) {
          this.rank = rank;
     }
}

Marshaller class which does the marshalling job

An instance of student is created and given for marshalling.

package blog.warfox.tutorials.marshalling;

import java.io.StringWriter;

import javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBException;
import javax.xml.bind.Marshaller;

public class MyMarshaller {

     public static String marshall(Object object) throws JAXBException {

        JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance(object.getClass());
        
        Marshaller m = context.createMarshaller();
        m.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, true);

        StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
        m.marshal(object, writer);

        return writer.toString();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws JAXBException {

        Student student = new Student();
        student.setName("Name");
        student.setRollNo(1);
        student.setMarks(99.99);
        student.setRank(1);
  
        System.out.println(marshall(student));
   }
}

Output:

    99.99
    Name
    1
    1

In the above example, JAXB has automatically copied the xml tags from the property names of Student class. We can set our own tag names by using JAXB's @XmlElement annotation on the access method as follows.

package blog.warfox.tutorials.marshalling;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

/**
 * Student class for Marshalling demo example
 * @author warfox
 *
 */
@XmlRootElement(name="student")
public class Student {

   private String name;

   private int rollNo;

   private double marks;

   private int rank;

   @XmlElement(name="student-name") 
   public String getName() {
      return this.name;
   }

   public void setName(String name) {
     this.name = name;
   }

   @XmlElement(name="student-rollno")
   public int getRollNo() {
     return this.rollNo;
   }

   public void setRollNo(int rollNo) {
     this.rollNo = rollNo;
   }

   @XmlElement(name="student-marks")
   public double getMarks() {
     return this.marks;
   }

   public void setMarks(double marks) {
     this.marks = marks;
   }

   @XmlElement(name="student-rank")
   public int getRank() {
     return this.rank;
   }

   public void setRank(int rank) {
    this.rank = rank;
   }
}

Output:

    99.99
    Name
    1
    1

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