How to ignore unused XML elements while deserializing a document?

java xml-deserialization simple-framework

Cristian · Jan 19, 2011 · Viewed 13.2k times · Source

I'm using SimpleXml to (de)serialize POJOs. Now, I have a big XML which has some elements which are not needed. For instance, with this XML:

<Root>
   <Element>Used</Element>
   <Another>Not used</Another>
<Root>

I want to create a POJO which looks like:

@Root
class Root{
    @Element
    private String element;
}

Problem is that I'm getting this Exception:

simpleframework.xml.core.ElementException: Element 'Another' does not have a
match in class blah.blah.Blah at line 1

So... how should I configure the POJO so that I can parse the XML correctly?

Answer

Set strict to false within the Root annotation to ignore any XML elements or attributes that do not appear in the class.

@Root(strict=false)

Alternatively, set strict to false when you read the xml in the serialiser:

Root root = serializer.read(Root.class, source, false);