Does JAXB support modifying existing XML documents without sorting / parsing?

Question

I want to save comments, orders, etc. in the document and edit the document in place using the Java interface.

Does JAXB do this?

Other tools like XMLBeans do this?

Answer 1

You can use the JAXB Binder for this use case:

Input.xml

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <customer> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_1/> <name>Jane Doe</name> <!-- COMMENT #1 --> <address> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_2/> <street>1 A Street</street> <!-- COMMENT #2 --> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_3/> <city>Any Town</city> </address> <!-- COMMENT #3 --> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_4/> <phone-number type="home">555-HOME</phone-number> <!-- COMMENT #4 --> <phone-number type="cell">555-CELL</phone-number> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_5/> <!-- COMMENT #5 --> </customer> 

Demo

 import java.io.File; import javax.xml.bind.*; import javax.xml.parsers.*; import javax.xml.transform.*; import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource; import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult; import org.w3c.dom.*; public class BinderDemo { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder(); File xml = new File("input.xml"); Document document = db.parse(xml); JAXBContext jc = JAXBContext.newInstance(Customer.class); Binder<Node> binder = jc.createBinder(); Customer customer = (Customer) binder.unmarshal(document); customer.getAddress().setStreet("2 NEW STREET"); PhoneNumber workPhone = new PhoneNumber(); workPhone.setType("work"); workPhone.setValue("555-WORK"); customer.getPhoneNumbers().add(workPhone); binder.updateXML(customer); TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance(); Transformer t = tf.newTransformer(); t.transform(new DOMSource(document), new StreamResult(System.out)); } } 

Exit

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?> <customer> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_1/> <name>Jane Doe</name> <!-- COMMENT #1 --> <address> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_2/> <street>2 NEW STREET</street> <!-- COMMENT #2 --> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_3/> <city>Any Town</city> </address> <!-- COMMENT #3 --> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_4/> <phone-number type="home">555-HOME</phone-number> <!-- COMMENT #4 --> <phone-number type="cell">555-CELL</phone-number> <phone-number type="work">555-WORK</phone-number> <UNMAPPED_ELEMENT_5/> <!-- COMMENT #5 --> </customer> 

Additional Information

• http://bdoughan.blogspot.com/2010/09/jaxb-xml-infoset-preservation.html