AVAJAVA Web Tutorials

In another tutorial, we saw how we could use the XMLEncoder class to save a JavaBeanW object to an XMLW file. Suppose we'd rather convert the JavaBean to a String representation rather than to a file. To do this, we can have the XMLEncoder write to a ByteArrayOutputStream rather than a FileOutputStream.

The XmlEncodeToString class demonstrates this. It creates a MyBean object, populates it with some data, and then the XMLEncoder class writes the object to a ByteArrayOutputStream. The ByteArrayOutputStream is converted to a String via a call to its toString() method. Then, this String is output to standard output.

XmlEncodeToString.java

package example;

import java.beans.XMLEncoder;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.util.Vector;

public class XmlEncodeToString {

	public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

		MyBean mb = new MyBean();
		mb.setMyBoolean(true);
		mb.setMyString("xml is cool");
		Vector<String> v = new Vector<String>();
		v.add("one");
		v.add("two");
		v.add("three");
		mb.setMyVector(v);

		ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
		XMLEncoder xmlEncoder = new XMLEncoder(baos);
		xmlEncoder.writeObject(mb);
		xmlEncoder.close();

		String xml = baos.toString();
		System.out.println(xml);

	}

}

The MyBean class is shown here:

MyBean.java

package example;

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.Vector;

public class MyBean implements Serializable {

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
	private boolean myBoolean;
	private String myString;
	private Vector<String> myVector;

	public MyBean() {
	}
	public boolean isMyBoolean() {
		return myBoolean;
	}
	public void setMyBoolean(boolean myBoolean) {
		this.myBoolean = myBoolean;
	}
	public String getMyString() {
		return myString;
	}
	public void setMyString(String myString) {
		this.myString = myString;
	}
	public Vector<String> getMyVector() {
		return myVector;
	}
	public void setMyVector(Vector<String> myVector) {
		this.myVector = myVector;
	}
}

Executing XmlEncodeToString results in the following console output:

Console Output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<java version="1.5.0_09" class="java.beans.XMLDecoder"> 
 <object class="example.MyBean"> 
  <void property="myBoolean"> 
   <boolean>true</boolean> 
  </void> 
  <void property="myString"> 
   <string>xml is cool</string> 
  </void> 
  <void property="myVector"> 
   <object class="java.util.Vector"> 
    <void method="add"> 
     <string>one</string> 
    </void> 
    <void method="add"> 
     <string>two</string> 
    </void> 
    <void method="add"> 
     <string>three</string> 
    </void> 
   </object> 
  </void> 
 </object> 
</java>