Can marshalling and unmarshalling behave differently?

Question

With this object for example :

public class Person {

    @XmlAttribute
    private String name = null;

    @XmlElement
    private Address address = null;

    // getters and setters
}

XML file :

<person name="blabla">
    <address>...</address>
</person>

What can I do if I want to load a complete Person object (name + address) when umarshalling but only saving its name when marshalling ? (i.e. not saving the address)

Answer 1

The easiest would be to make a copy and remove unnecessary data.

Another (much more complicated option) option would be to defined different mappings. This is possible with MOXy:

Map<String, Object> tenantOneProps = new HashMap<String, Object>();
ArrayList tenantOneBindings = new ArrayList();
tenantOneBindings.add("examples/virtual/base-bindings.xml");
tenantOneBindings.add("examples/virtual/binding-tenant1.xml");
tenantOneProps.put(JAXBContextFactory.ECLIPSELINK_OXM_XML_KEY, tenantOneBindings);
JAXBContext tentantOneContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(new Class[] {Customer.class, Address.class}, tenantOneProps);

Map<String, Object> tenantTwoProps= new HashMap<String, Object>();
ArrayList tenantTwoBindings = new ArrayList();
tenantTwoBindings.add("examples/virtual/base-bindings.xml");
tenantTwoBindings.add("examples/virtual/binding-tenant2.xml");
tenantTwoProps.put(JAXBContextFactory.ECLIPSELINK_OXM_XML_KEY, tenantTwoBindings);
JAXBContext tentantTwoContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(new Class[] {Customer.class, Address.class}, tenantTwoProps);

Here you define two sets of mappings - base plus either tenant1 or tenant2. Thus you create two contexts. You can unmarshal with one and marshal with another.