Java Generics and XML

In my world of .Net, I know exactly how to serialize and deserialize between Objects and an XML file.  I typically carry around functions with Generics so I can minimize my code.

I had to do something in Java, and struggled to find the exact same thing out on the web.  So I made my own set of functions using JAXB.

**************************************************

import java.io.*;

import javax.xml.*;

import javax.xml.bind.*;

import javax.xml.validation.*;

import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

/**

 * Generic Utilitarian Class 

 *

 */

public class GenericUtilities

{

/**

* Class for taking an XML file and converting it to define objects

* 

* @param xmlFile - A valid XML file for pulling object definitions from

* @param schemaFile - 

* @param type - The class of the object to convert the XML into

* @return - The instance of the defined class, constructed from the XML

* @throws JAXBException 

* @throws FileNotFoundException

* @throws SAXException 

*/

public static T DeserializeObjects(String xmlFile, String schemaFile, Class type) throws JAXBException, FileNotFoundException, SAXException

{

// Create a JAXB context passing in the class of the object we want to marshal/unmarshal

        JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance(type);

 

// Create the unmarshaller to transform the XML back into an object

        Unmarshaller unmarshaller = context.createUnmarshaller();

 

        // Create a variable for the schema.

        Schema xmlSchema = null;

        

        if (schemaFile != null)

        {

        // Establish the schema factory for loading the schema

        SchemaFactory factory = SchemaFactory.newInstance(XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI);

       

        // Get a File object representation of the inputed schema

        File sf = new File(schemaFile);

       

        // Use the factory and file objects to instantiate an instance of the Schema object

        xmlSchema = factory.newSchema(sf);

        }

        

        // Set schema validation.  Null value turns validation off.

        unmarshaller.setSchema(xmlSchema);

        

        // Unmarshal the XML in the stringWriter back into an object

        Object o = unmarshaller.unmarshal(new FileInputStream(xmlFile));

        T entity = type.cast(o);

        

return entity;

}

/**

* Converts an instance object into a String containing the XML representation of that object.

* 

* @param entity - The object to serialize into XML

* @return

* @throws JAXBException

*/

public static String SerializeObjects(T entity) throws JAXBException

{

// Create a JAXB context passing in the class of the object we want to marshal/unmarshal

        JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance(entity.getClass());

 

        // Create the marshaller, this will transform the object into XML

        Marshaller marshaller = context.createMarshaller();

 

        // Create a stringWriter to hold the XML

        StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();

        

        // Marshal the javaObject and write the XML to the stringWriter

        marshaller.marshal(entity, stringWriter);

 

        return stringWriter.toString();

}

}