Resteasy's JAXB providers have a pluggable way to decorate Marshaller and Unmarshaller instances. The way it works is that you can write an annotation that can trigger the decoration of a Marshaller or Unmarshaller. Your decorators can do things like set Marshaller or Unmarshaller properties, set up validation, stuff like that. Here's an example. Let's say we want to have an annotation that will trigger pretty-printing, nice formatting, of an XML document. If we were doing raw JAXB, we would set a property on the Marshaller of Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT. Let's write a Marshaller decorator.

First we define a annotation:

 import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.Decorator;

 @Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.FIELD})
 @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
 @Decorator(processor = PrettyProcessor.class, target = Marshaller.class)
 public @interface Pretty {}
 

To get this to work, we must annotate our @Pretty annotation with a meta-annotation called @Decorator. The target() attribute must be the JAXB Marshaller class. The processor() attribute is a class we will write next.

 
 import org.jboss.resteasy.core.interception.DecoratorProcessor;
 import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.DecorateTypes;

 import javax.xml.bind.Marshaller;
 import javax.xml.bind.PropertyException;
 import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;
 import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
 import java.lang.annotation.Annotation;

 /**
  * @author <a href="mailto:bill@burkecentral.com">Bill Burke</a>
  * @version $Revision: 1 $
  */
 @DecorateTypes({"text/*+xml", "application/*+xml"})
 public class PrettyProcessor implements DecoratorProcessor<Marshaller, Pretty>
 {
    public Marshaller decorate(Marshaller target, Pretty annotation,
                  Class type, Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType)
    {
       target.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, Boolean.TRUE);
    }
 }
 
 

The processor implementation must implement the DecoratorProcessor interface and should also be annotated with @DecorateTypes. This annotation specifies what media types the processor can be used with. Now that we've defined our annotation and our Processor, we can use it on our JAX-RS resource methods or JAXB types as follows:

   @GET
   @Pretty
   @Produces("application/xml")
   public SomeJAXBObject get() {...}
 

If you are confused, check the Resteasy source code for the implementation of @XmlHeader

You should not use this feature unless you know what you're doing.

Based on the class you are marshalling/unmarshalling, RESTEasy will, by default create and cache JAXBContext instances per class type. If you do not want RESTEasy to create JAXBContexts, you can plug-in your own by implementing an instance of javax.ws.rs.ext.ContextResolver

 public interface ContextResolver<T>
 {
T getContext(Class<?> type);
 }

 @Provider
 @Produces("application/xml")
 public class MyJAXBContextResolver implements ContextResolver<JAXBContext>
 {
JAXBContext getContext(Class<?> type)
{
   if (type.equals(WhateverClassIsOverridedFor.class)) return JAXBContext.newInstance()...;
}
 }
         

You must provide a @Produces annotation to specify the media type the context is meant for. You must also make sure to implement ContextResolver<JAXBContext>. This helps the runtime match to the correct context resolver. You must also annotate the ContextResolver class with @Provider.

There are multiple ways to make this ContextResolver available.

Resteasy is required to provide JAXB provider support for XML. It has a few extra annotations that can help code your app.

RESTEasy allows you to marshall JAXB annotated POJOs to and from JSON. This provider wraps the Jettison JSON library to accomplish this. You can obtain more information about Jettison and how it works from:

http://jettison.codehaus.org/

To use this integration with Jettision you need to import the resteasy-jettison-provider Maven module. Older versions of RESTEasy used to include this within the resteasy-jaxb-provider but we decided to modularize it more.

Jettison has two mapping formats. One is BadgerFish the other is a Jettison Mapped Convention format. The Mapped Convention is the default mapping.

For example, consider this JAXB class:

 @XmlRootElement(name = "book")
 public class Book
 {
private String author;
private String ISBN;
private String title;

public Book()
{
}

public Book(String author, String ISBN, String title)
{
   this.author = author;
   this.ISBN = ISBN;
   this.title = title;
}

@XmlElement
public String getAuthor()
{
   return author;
}

public void setAuthor(String author)
{
   this.author = author;
}

@XmlElement
public String getISBN()
{
   return ISBN;
}

public void setISBN(String ISBN)
{
   this.ISBN = ISBN;
}

@XmlAttribute
public String getTitle()
{
   return title;
}

public void setTitle(String title)
{
   this.title = title;
}
 }
         

This is how the JAXB Book class would be marshalled to JSON using the BadgerFish Convention

 {"book":
    {
       "@title":"EJB 3.0",
       "author":{"$":"Bill Burke"},
       "ISBN":{"$":"596529260"}
    }
 }
 

Notice that element values have a map associated with them and to get to the value of the element, you must access the "$" variable. Here's an example of accessing the book in Javascript:

 var data = eval("(" + xhr.responseText + ")");
 document.getElementById("zone").innerHTML = data.book.@title;
 document.getElementById("zone").innerHTML += data.book.author.$;
 

To use the BadgerFish Convention you must use the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.json.BadgerFish annotation on the JAXB class you are marshalling/unmarshalling, or, on the JAX-RS resource method or parameter:

 @BadgerFish
 @XmlRootElement(name = "book")
 public class Book {...}
 

If you are returning a book on the JAX-RS method and you don't want to (or can't) pollute your JAXB classes with RESTEasy annotations, add the annotation to the JAX-RS method:

 @BadgerFish
 @GET
 public Book getBook(...) {...}
 

If a Book is your input then you put it on the parameter:

 @POST
 public void newBook(@BadgerFish Book book) {...}
 

The default Jettison Mapped Convention would return JSON that looked like this:

 { "book" :
      {
         "@title":"EJB 3.0",
         "author":"Bill Burke",
         "ISBN":596529260
       }
 }
 

Notice that the @XmlAttribute "title" is prefixed with the '@' character. Unlike BadgerFish, the '$' does not represent the value of element text. This format is a bit simpler than the BadgerFish convention which is why it was chose as a default. Here's an example of accessing this in Javascript:

 var data = eval("(" + xhr.responseText + ")");
 document.getElementById("zone").innerHTML = data.book.@title;
 document.getElementById("zone").innerHTML += data.book.author;
 

The Mapped Convention allows you to fine tune the JAXB mapping using the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.json.Mapped annotation. You can provide an XML Namespace to JSON namespace mapping. For example, if you defined your JAXB namespace within your package-info.java class like this:

 @javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlSchema(namespace="http://jboss.org/books")
 package org.jboss.resteasy.test.books;
 

You would have to define a JSON to XML namespace mapping or you would receive an exception of something like this:

 java.lang.IllegalStateException: Invalid JSON namespace: http://jboss.org/books
 at org.codehaus.jettison.mapped.MappedNamespaceConvention.getJSONNamespace(MappedNamespaceConvention.java:151)
 at org.codehaus.jettison.mapped.MappedNamespaceConvention.createKey(MappedNamespaceConvention.java:158)
 at org.codehaus.jettison.mapped.MappedXMLStreamWriter.writeStartElement(MappedXMLStreamWriter.java:241)
 

To fix this problem you need another annotation, @Mapped. You use the @Mapped annotation on your JAXB classes, on your JAX-RS resource method, or on the parameter you are unmarshalling

 import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.json.Mapped;
 import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.json.XmlNsMap;

 ...

@GET
@Produces("application/json")
@Mapped(namespaceMap = {
        @XmlNsMap(namespace = "http://jboss.org/books", jsonName = "books")
})
public Book get() {...}

 

Besides mapping XML to JSON namespaces, you can also force @XmlAttribute's to be marshaled as XMLElements.

            @Mapped(attributeAsElements={"title"})
            @XmlRootElement(name = "book")
            public class Book {...}
         

If you are returning a book on the JAX-RS method and you don't want to (or can't) pollute your JAXB classes with RESTEasy annotations, add the annotation to the JAX-RS method:

            @Mapped(attributeAsElements={"title"})
            @GET
            public Book getBook(...) {...}
         

If a Book is your input then you put it on the parameter:

 @POST
 public void newBook(@Mapped(attributeAsElements={"title"}) Book book) {...}
 

RESTEasy supports the FastinfoSet mime type with JAXB annotated classes. Fast infoset documents are faster to serialize and parse, and smaller in size, than logically equivalent XML documents. Thus, fast infoset documents may be used whenever the size and processing time of XML documents is an issue. It is configured the same way the XML JAXB provider is so really no other documentation is needed here.

To use this integration with Fastinfoset you need to import the resteasy-fastinfoset-provider Maven module. Older versions of RESTEasy used to include this within the resteasy-jaxb-provider but we decided to modularize it more.

RESTEasy will automatically marshal arrays, java.util.Set's, and java.util.List's of JAXB objects to and from XML, JSON, Fastinfoset (or any other new JAXB mapper Restasy comes up with).

 @XmlRootElement(name = "customer")
 @XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
 public class Customer
 {
@XmlElement
private String name;

public Customer()
{
}

public Customer(String name)
{
   this.name = name;
}

public String getName()
{
   return name;
}
 }

 @Path("/")
 public class MyResource
 {
   @PUT
   @Path("array")
   @Consumes("application/xml")
   public void putCustomers(Customer[] customers)
   {
      Assert.assertEquals("bill", customers[0].getName());
      Assert.assertEquals("monica", customers[1].getName());
   }

   @GET
   @Path("set")
   @Produces("application/xml")
   public Set<Customer> getCustomerSet()
   {
      HashSet<Customer> set = new HashSet<Customer>();
      set.add(new Customer("bill"));
      set.add(new Customer("monica"));

      return set;
   }


   @PUT
   @Path("list")
   @Consumes("application/xml")
   public void putCustomers(List<Customer> customers)
   {
      Assert.assertEquals("bill", customers.get(0).getName());
      Assert.assertEquals("monica", customers.get(1).getName());
   }
 }
 
 

The above resource can publish and receive JAXB objects. It is assumed that are wrapped in a collection element

 <collection>
<customer><name>bill</name></customer>
<customer><name>monica</name></customer>
 <collection>
 
 

You can change the namespace URI, namespace tag, and collection element name by using the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.Wrapped annotation on a parameter or method

 @Target({ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.METHOD})
 @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
 public @interface Wrapped
 {
String element() default "collection";

String namespace() default "http://jboss.org/resteasy";

String prefix() default "resteasy";
 }
 

So, if we wanted to output this XML

 <foo:list xmlns:foo="http://foo.org">
<customer><name>bill</name></customer>
<customer><name>monica</name></customer>
 </foo:list>
 
 

We would use the @Wrapped annotation as follows:

   @GET
   @Path("list")
   @Produces("application/xml")
   @Wrapped(element="list", namespace="http://foo.org", prefix="foo")
   public List<Customer> getCustomerSet()
   {
      List<Customer> list = new ArrayList<Customer>();
      list.add(new Customer("bill"));
      list.add(new Customer("monica"));

      return list;
   }
 
 

RESTEasy will automatically marshal maps of JAXB objects to and from XML, JSON, Fastinfoset (or any other new JAXB mapper Restasy comes up with). Your parameter or method return type must be a generic with a String as the key and the JAXB object's type.

@XmlRootElement(namespace = "http://foo.com")
public static class Foo
{
   @XmlAttribute
   private String name;

   public Foo()
   {
   }

   public Foo(String name)
   {
      this.name = name;
   }

   public String getName()
   {
      return name;
   }
}

@Path("/map")
public static class MyResource
{
   @POST
   @Produces("application/xml")
   @Consumes("application/xml")
   public Map<String, Foo> post(Map<String, Foo> map)
   {
      Assert.assertEquals(2, map.size());
      Assert.assertNotNull(map.get("bill"));
      Assert.assertNotNull(map.get("monica"));
      Assert.assertEquals(map.get("bill").getName(), "bill");
      Assert.assertEquals(map.get("monica").getName(), "monica");
      return map;
   }
 }
 
 

The above resource can publish and receive JAXB objects within a map. By default, they are wrapped in a "map" element in the default namespace. Also, each "map" element has zero or more "entry" elements with a "key" attribute.

 <map>
<entry key="bill" xmlns="http://foo.com">
    <foo name="bill"/>
</entry>
<entry key="monica" xmlns="http://foo.com">
    <foo name="monica"/>
</entry>
 </map>
 
 

You can change the namespace URI, namespace prefix and map, entry, and key element and attribute names by using the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.WrappedMap annotation on a parameter or method

 @Target({ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.METHOD})
 @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
 public @interface WrappedMap
 {
/**
 * map element name
 */
String map() default "map";

/**
 * entry element name *
 */
String entry() default "entry";

/**
 * entry's key attribute name
 */
String key() default "key";

String namespace() default "";

String prefix() default "";
 }
 

So, if we wanted to output this XML

 <hashmap>
<hashentry hashkey="bill" xmlns:foo="http://foo.com">
    <foo:foo name="bill"/>
</hashentry>
 </map>
 
 

We would use the @WrappedMap annotation as follows:

@Path("/map")
public static class MyResource
{
   @GET
   @Produces("application/xml")
   @WrappedMap(map="hashmap", entry="hashentry", key="hashkey")
   public Map<String, Foo> get()
   {
      ...
      return map;
   }
 
 

Some objects models use abstract classes and interfaces heavily. Unfortunately, JAXB doesn't work with interfaces that are root elements and RESTEasy can't unmarshal parameters that are interfaces or raw abstract classes because it doesn't have enough information to create a JAXBContext. For example:

 public interface IFoo {}

 @XmlRootElement
 public class RealFoo implements IFoo {}

 @Path("/jaxb")
 public class MyResource {

@PUT
@Consumes("application/xml")
public void put(IFoo foo) {...}
 }
 

In this example, you would get an error from RESTEasy of something like "Cannot find a MessageBodyReader for...". This is because RESTEasy does not know that implementations of IFoo are JAXB classes and doesn't know how to create a JAXBContext for it. As a workaround, RESTEasy allows you to use the JAXB annotation @XmlSeeAlso on the interface to correct the problem. (NOTE, this will not work with manual, hand-coded JAXB).

 @XmlSeeAlso(RealFoo.class)
 public interface IFoo {}
 

The extra @XmlSeeAlso on IFoo allows RESTEasy to create a JAXBContext that knows how to unmarshal RealFoo instances.