JAXB and Date/Time Properties

In this post I will describe how JAXB handles date/time information.  This post will also cover how the @XmlSchemaType annotation can be used to customize the XML representation.


XML Schema (date.xsd)

The following XML schema will be used for this post.  Note that the date-of-birth element is of type xsd:date.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsd:schema
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

    <xsd:element name="customer">
        <xsd:complexType>
            <xsd:sequence>
                <xsd:element 
                    name="date-of-birth" 
                    type="xsd:date" 
                    minOccurs="0"/>
            </xsd:sequence>
        </xsd:complexType>
    </xsd:element>

</xsd:schema>

Generated Model - XMLGregorianCalendar Property


From this XML schema we can generate a class model using the following XJC call:

xjc -d out -p blog.date date.xsd

This will result in a Customer class that looks like the following.  There are a couple of interesting things to note:

1. The dateOfBirth property is of type javax.xml.datatype.XMLGregorianCalendar.  
2. The use of @XmlSchemaType. 

Some Java data types (like XMLGregorianCalendar) have multiple XML representations (like xsd:date, xsd:time, xsd:dateTime, etc.) and @XmlSchemaType is used to choose the desired representation.

package blog.date;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlSchemaType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlType;
import javax.xml.datatype.XMLGregorianCalendar;

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
@XmlType(name = "", propOrder = {"dateOfBirth"})
@XmlRootElement(name = "customer")
public class Customer {

    @XmlElement(name = "date-of-birth")
    @XmlSchemaType(name = "date")
    protected XMLGregorianCalendar dateOfBirth;

    public XMLGregorianCalendar getDateOfBirth() {
        return dateOfBirth;
    }

    public void setDateOfBirth(XMLGregorianCalendar value) {
        this.dateOfBirth = value;
    }

}

User Defined - Date (or Calendar) Property

Even though the JAXB XML schema to Java compiler (XJC) generates a property of type XMLGregorianCalendar by default, you are free to use java.util.Date and java.util.Calendar as well.

package blog.date;

import java.util.Date;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlSchemaType;

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

    @XmlElement(name = "date-of-birth")
    @XmlSchemaType(name = "date")
    protected Date dateOfBirth;

    public Date getDateOfBirth() {
        return dateOfBirth;
    }

    public void setDateOfBirth(Date value) {
        this.dateOfBirth = value;
    }

}

EclipseLink JAXB (MOXy) Extension

EclipseLink JAXB (MOXy) also supports the following types which are not covered in the JAXB specification (JSR-222):

• java.sql.Date
• java.sql.Time
• java.sql.Timestamp