JaxB can handle Java.util.Date serialization, but it expects the following format: “yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss“. What if you need to format the date object in another format?

I had the same issue when I was working with Spring MVc 3 and Jackson JSON Processor, and recently, I faced the same issue working with Spring MVC 3 and JAXB for XML serialization.

Let’s dig into the issue:

Problem:

I have the following Java Beans which I want to serialize in XML using Spring MVC 3:

package com.loiane.model;
 
import java.util.Date;
 
public class Company {
 
    private int id;
 
    private String company;
 
    private double price;
 
    private double change;
 
    private double pctChange;
 
    private Date lastChange;
 
    //getters and setters

And I have another object which is going to wrap the POJO above:

package com.loiane.model;
 
import java.util.List;
 
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;
 
@XmlRootElement(name="companies")
public class Companies {
 
    @XmlElement(required = true)
    private List<Company> list;
 
    public void setList(List<Company> list) {
        this.list = list;
    }
}

In my Spring controller, I’m going to return a List of Company through the the @ResponseBody annotation – which is going to serialize the object automatically with JaxB:

@RequestMapping(value="/company/view.action")
public @ResponseBody Companies view() throws Exception {}

When I call the controller method, this is what it returns to the view:

<companies>
    <list>
        <change>0.02</change>
        <company>3m Co</company>
        <id>1</id>
        <lastChange>2011-09-01T00:00:00-03:00</lastChange>
        <pctChange>0.03</pctChange>
        <price>71.72</price>
    </list>
    <list>
        <change>0.42</change>
        <company>Alcoa Inc</company>
        <id>2</id>
        <lastChange>2011-09-01T00:00:00-03:00</lastChange>
        <pctChange>1.47</pctChange>
        <price>29.01</price>
    </list>
</companies>

Note the date format. It is not the format I expect it to return. I need to serialize the date in the following format: “MM-dd-yyyy“

Solution:

I need to create a class extending the XmlAdapter and override the marshal and unmarshal methods and in these methods I am going to format the date as I need to:

package com.loiane.util;
 
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
 
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlAdapter;
 
public class JaxbDateSerializer extends XmlAdapter<String, Date>{
 
    private SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy");
 
    @Override
    public String marshal(Date date) throws Exception {
        return dateFormat.format(date);
    }
 
    @Override
    public Date unmarshal(String date) throws Exception {
        return dateFormat.parse(date);
    }
}

And in my Java Bean class, I simply need to add the @XmlJavaTypeAdapter annotation in the get method of the date property.

package com.loiane.model;
 
import java.util.Date;
 
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlJavaTypeAdapter;
 
import com.loiane.util.JaxbDateSerializer;
 
public class Company {
 
    private int id;
 
    private String company;
 
    private double price;
 
    private double change;
 
    private double pctChange;
 
    private Date lastChange;
 
    @XmlJavaTypeAdapter(JaxbDateSerializer.class)
    public Date getLastChange() {
        return lastChange;
    }
    //getters and setters
}

If we try to call the controller method again, it is going to return the following XML:

<companies>
    <list>
        <change>0.02</change>
        <company>3m Co</company>
        <id>1</id>
        <lastChange>09-01-2011</lastChange>
        <pctChange>0.03</pctChange>
        <price>71.72</price>
    </list>
    <list>
        <change>0.42</change>
        <company>Alcoa Inc</company>
        <id>2</id>
        <lastChange>09-01-2011</lastChange>
        <pctChange>1.47</pctChange>
        <price>29.01</price>
    </list>
</companies>

Problem solved!

Happy Coding!

From http://loianegroner.com/2011/06/jaxb-custom-binding-java-util-date-spring-3-serialization/