A practical guide to JAXB 2.0

Take a peek at its new features

By Deepak Vohra • Get more from this author

Posted in Developer, 22nd September 2006 11:40 GMT

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The directory structure of the JAXB2 project is shown in Figure 2.

JAXB Project Directory Structure

Compiling an XML Schema

In this section, we will bind the catalog schema, catalog.xsd, to Java classes with the xjc compiler. We shall configure xjc as an external tool in Eclipse. Select Run>External Tools>External Tools. In the External Tools frame, right-click on the Program node and select New to create a new configuration as shown in Figure 3. XJC External Tools Configuration

Also, set environment variables JAVA_HOME and JAXB_HOME in the external tool configuration for xjc in the Environment tab, as shown in Figure 4.

Setting Environment Variables

Run xjc compiler on the example schema, catalog.xsd. Select catalog.xsd file in the Package Explorer window and then Run>External Tools>XJC.

The output from the XJC compiler is shown in Figure 5.

Output from XJC Compiler

Schema-derived classes get generated in the gen_source folder, as shown in Figure 6.

Schema Derived Classes

Java classes and interfaces are generated in package generated, by default. For each xsd:complexType schema component, one value class gets generated, instead of an interface and an implementation class. For example, for catalogType complexType a Java value class CatalogType.java gets generated. An ObjectFactory.java class also gets generated. The factory class consists of create methods to create Java value class objects.

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