While working on Jettison, I often need to convert XML to JSON. Here’s a simple method that uses XStream and Jettison:

import java.io.StringReader;
import java.io.StringWriter;

import com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.HierarchicalStreamReader;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.HierarchicalStreamWriter;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.copy.HierarchicalStreamCopier;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.json.JettisonMappedXmlDriver;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.XppReader;

public class Test {

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

		String xml = "ToveJaniReminder" +
				"Don't forget me this weekend!";

        HierarchicalStreamReader sourceReader = new XppReader(new StringReader(xml));

        StringWriter buffer = new StringWriter();
        JettisonMappedXmlDriver jettisonDriver = new JettisonMappedXmlDriver();
        jettisonDriver.createWriter(buffer);
        HierarchicalStreamWriter destinationWriter = jettisonDriver.createWriter(buffer);

        HierarchicalStreamCopier copier = new HierarchicalStreamCopier();
        copier.copy(sourceReader, destinationWriter);

        System.out.println(buffer.toString());
	}

}

All conversion problems like lists representation are handled by Jetttison. This example uses Mapped convention, but of course, BadgerFish notation can be used as well.