JAXB Custom Binding – Java.util.Date / Spring 3 Serialization

JaxB can handle Java.util.Date serialization, but it expects the following format: “yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss“. What if you need to format the date object in another format?

I had the same issue when I was working with Spring MVc 3 and Jackson JSON Processor, and recently, I faced the same issue working with Spring MVC 3 and JAXB for XML serialization.

Let’s digg into the issue:

Problem:

I have the following Java Beans which I want to serialize in XML using Spring MVC 3:

package com.loiane.model;

import java.util.Date;

public class Company {

 private int id;

 private String company;

 private double price;

 private double change;

 private double pctChange;

 private Date lastChange;

 //getters and setters

And I have another object which is going to wrap the POJO above:

package com.loiane.model;

import java.util.List;

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

@XmlRootElement(name="companies")
public class Companies {

 @XmlElement(required = true)
 private List<Company> list;

 public void setList(List<Company> list) {
  this.list = list;
 }
}

In my Spring controller, I’m going to return a List of Company through the the @ResponseBody annotation – which is going to serialize the object automatically with JaxB:

@RequestMapping(value="/company/view.action")
public @ResponseBody Companies view() throws Exception {}

When I call the controller method, this is what it returns to the view:

<companies>
 <list>
  <change>0.02</change>
  <company>3m Co</company>
  <id>1</id>
  <lastChange>2011-09-01T00:00:00-03:00</lastChange>
  <pctChange>0.03</pctChange>
  <price>71.72</price>
 </list>
 <list>
  <change>0.42</change>
  <company>Alcoa Inc</company>
  <id>2</id>
  <lastChange>2011-09-01T00:00:00-03:00</lastChange>
  <pctChange>1.47</pctChange>
  <price>29.01</price>
 </list>
</companies>

Note the date format. It is not the format I expect it to return. I need to serialize the date in the following format: “MM-dd-yyyy“ Solution:

I need to create a class extending the XmlAdapter and override the marshal and unmarshal methods and in these methods I am going to format the date as I need to:

package com.loiane.util;

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlAdapter;

public class JaxbDateSerializer extends XmlAdapter<String, Date>{

 private SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy");

    @Override
    public String marshal(Date date) throws Exception {
        return dateFormat.format(date);
    }

    @Override
    public Date unmarshal(String date) throws Exception {
        return dateFormat.parse(date);
    }
}

And in my Java Bean class, I simply need to add the @XmlJavaTypeAdapter annotation in the get method of the date property.

package com.loiane.model;

import java.util.Date;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlJavaTypeAdapter;

import com.loiane.util.JaxbDateSerializer;

public class Company {

 private int id;

 private String company;

 private double price;

 private double change;

 private double pctChange;

 private Date lastChange;

 @XmlJavaTypeAdapter(JaxbDateSerializer.class)
 public Date getLastChange() {
  return lastChange;
 }
 //getters and setters
}

If we try to call the controller method again, it is going to return the following XML:

<companies>
 <list>
  <change>0.02</change>
  <company>3m Co</company>
  <id>1</id>
  <lastChange>09-01-2011</lastChange>
  <pctChange>0.03</pctChange>
  <price>71.72</price>
 </list>
 <list>
  <change>0.42</change>
  <company>Alcoa Inc</company>
  <id>2</id>
  <lastChange>09-01-2011</lastChange>
  <pctChange>1.47</pctChange>
  <price>29.01</price>
 </list>
</companies>

Problem solved!

Happy Coding!

Reference: JAXB Custom Binding – Java.util.Date / Spring 3 Serialization from our JCG partner Loiane Groner at the Loiane Groner’s blog blog.