How to unmarshel XML String to List using JAXB in Java

Question

I am working on unmarshalling an XML into java object using JAXB. I don't know how to unmarshal a string in an XML element into List. This is what I have tried:

    private List<String> words;

    public List<String> getWords() {
        return words;
    }

    @XmlElement(name="Words")
    public void setWords(String words) {
        /* Converting String to List */
        this.words = Arrays.asList(words.split(", "));
    }

My XML:

<Words>A, B, C, D</Words>

Instead of List, the code gives me null. If I change the type of words from List to String, then it is working fine. Is it possible to convert from String to List or array?

XML parsing code:

File file = new File("path\\to\\xml");
JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(Myclass.class); 
Unmarshaller jaxbUnmarshaller = jaxbContext.createUnmarshaller();
Myclass xmlContent = (Myclass) jaxbUnmarshaller.unmarshal(file);
System.out.println(xmlContent.getWords());

PS: The other question linked is different from this, here I am trying to get the String from XML element(a single element) and split and store it in a list. Whereas in the other, the question was splitting the XML string and storing some elements in list.

Possible duplicate of Parse XML string and build a list of strings — Abhinav
– Abhinav, Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 12:39
There must be a problem different from the conversion by split(", ") and Array.asList. Does your xml parser work correctly? I just tried to split a String listAsString = "A, B, C, D" with your Arrays.asList(words.split(", ")) and it worked. — deHaar
– deHaar, Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 12:45
@deHaar - That conversion works fine. But while parsing it is not giving correct result. I should have missed something while parsing. Is there any way to do this in JAXB? — Antony Vimal Raj
– Antony Vimal Raj, Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 12:54

Antony Vimal Raj · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-06 12:03:50Z

0

Finally I have figured out the problem and found the solution to get array of strings instead of list of strings.

private String[] words;

@XmlElement(name="Words")
public void setWords(String[] words) {
    /* Converting String to Array */
    this.words = words[0].split(", ");
}

The problem was method parameter type(String) and variable type(List<String>) were not same. It should be same in order to parse it correctly. I have changed both of them to String[] and put my logic in setter. Now the string in XML is parsed into String[].

answered Dec 6, 2018 at 12:03

Antony Vimal Raj

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