jaxb unmarshal timestamp

Question

I cannot get JAXB to unmarshal a timestamp in a Resteasy JAX-RS server application.

My class looks like this:

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)
@XmlRootElement(name = "foo")
public final class Foo {
    // Other fields omitted

    @XmlElement(name = "timestamp", required = true)
    protected Date timestamp;

    public Foo() {}

    public Date getTimestamp() {
        return timestamp;
    }

    public String getTimestampAsString() {
        return (timestamp != null) ? new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss").format(timestamp) : null;
    }

    public void setTimestamp(final Date timestamp) {
        this.timestamp = timestamp;
    }

    public void setTimestamp(final String timestampAsString) {
        try {
            this.timestamp = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss").parse(timestampAsString);
        } catch (ParseException ex) {
            this.timestamp = null;
        }
    }
}

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Answer 1

JAXB can handle the java.util.Date class. However it expects the format:

"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss" instead of "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"

If you want to use that date format I would suggest using an XmlAdapter, it would look something like the following:

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

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

public class DateAdapter extends XmlAdapter<String, Date> {

    private SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");

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

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

}

You would then specify this adapter on your timestamp property:

import java.util.Date;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlJavaTypeAdapter;

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE) 
@XmlRootElement(name = "foo") 
public final class Foo { 
    // Other fields omitted 

    @XmlElement(name = "timestamp", required = true) 
    @XmlJavaTypeAdapter(DateAdapter.class)
    protected Date timestamp; 

    public Foo() {} 

    public Date getTimestamp() { 
        return timestamp; 
    } 

    public void setTimestamp(final Date timestamp) { 
        this.timestamp = timestamp; 
    } 

}