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I have a Map key/value: string/string which contains an XML element name as key and a large XML nested string as value, e.g: 

Map<String, String> obj;

INSPIRE => <oi-cov:OrthoimageCoverageMetadata xmlns:oi-cov="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/schemas/oi/4.0" xmlns:gmd="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gmd" xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml/3.2" xmlns:base="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/schemas/base/3.3" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:gco="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gco" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xsi:schemaLocation="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/schemas/oi/4.0 https://schema.datacove.eu/OrthoimageryMetadata.xsd"> <oi-cov:inspireId> ...

Using Jackson to serialize this object as String, the XML special character '<' and '>' in the map value always translated to '&lt;' and '&gt;'. How can I prevent it?

private static final XmlMapper xmlMapper = new XmlMapper();
String xml = xmlMapper.writer().writeValueAsString(obj);

The current output as string is:

<INSPIRE>&lt;oi-cov:OrthoimageCoverageMetadata xmlns:oi-cov="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/schemas/oi/4.0" xmlns:gmd="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gmd" xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml/3.2" xmlns:base="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/schemas/base/3.3" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:gco="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gco" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xsi:schemaLocation="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/schemas/oi/4.0 https://schema.datacove.eu/OrthoimageryMetadata.xsd"&gt;
&lt;oi-cov:inspireId&gt;
    &lt;base:Identifier&gt;
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  • Well you are serializing to XML, even if you're only getting the string representation, so it makes a lot of sense for special characters to be escaped - otherwise your resulting markup would very likely be broken. Have you considered getting rid of the property value "as string" and instead have a nested POJO representing that value, so it can be serialized within the parent POJO? Commented Oct 9, 2019 at 10:38
  • @Mena the problem is the XML value here is pretty much a general XML with arbitrary nested XML elements so I cannot map it as a POJO object. Commented Oct 9, 2019 at 10:46
  • Understood. But then what is your expectation on how it should be serialized? If the special characters weren't escaped, you would end up with invalid XML - in fact you probably wouldn't even be able to de-serialize back into the pojo. My suspicion is that he issue is at the root, i.e. why did you end up with a map of String -> arbitrary markup and can you escape that design trap? Commented Oct 9, 2019 at 11:13
  • For instance, if those arbitrary markup values have some common structure, you could try and create a POJO hierarchy reflecting it and use annotation for polymorphic collections so they are de-serialized to the correct child POJO on the way back (assuming that's in the plans). Commented Oct 9, 2019 at 11:15
  • 2
    Since Jackson's XmlMapper claims to follow JAXB, then perhaps the answer to this question will help you: JAXB - marshal java object with XML string field Commented Oct 9, 2019 at 11:20
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