Can I serialize into an XML format?

[Kaydell Leavitt]

I did the following as an exercise to learn how to do serialization. It works, but I believe that it reads and writes an object in a binary format. My question is how can I serialize my Cat object into XML format?

package serialization;
 
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.ObjectInputStream;
import java.io.ObjectOutputStream;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.Date;
 
public class Cat implements Serializable {

private static final String fileName = "temp.out";

private String name;
private Date birthdate;

public Cat(String name, Date birthdate) {
this.name = name;
this.birthdate = birthdate;
}

@Override
public String toString() {
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("name: " + name + ", approximate birthdate: " + birthdate);
String string = sb.toString();
return string;
}

@SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException {

// create a cat object
Cat cat1 = new Cat("Scarlet",new Date(2000,1,1));

// serialize the cat object and write it to a file on the hard drive
ObjectOutputStream out = new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(fileName));
out.writeObject(cat1);
out.close();

// read the cat object back in from the disk file
ObjectInputStream in = new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream(fileName));
Cat cat2 = (Cat) in.readObject(); // remember to cast objects read from serialized streams to be the correct type

// print the cat that was read from the serialized cat to the console.
System.out.println(cat2);

}
 
}

[ September 10, 2008: Message edited by: Kaydell Leavitt ]

[Freddy Wong]

You can use java.beans.XMLEncoder for that, e.g.

    
MyBean bean = new MyBean();
bean.setMsg("Hello World");
XMLEncoder xmlEncoder = null;
try
{
    xmlEncoder = new XMLEncoder(System.out);
    xmlEncoder.writeObject(bean);
}
finally
{
    if (xmlEncoder != null)
    {
        xmlEncoder.close();
    }
}

Alternatively, you can use XStream.
http://xstream.codehaus.org/

[Jibitesh Prasad]

Or you can try Apache's Xerces.