Producing XML Response with RESTEasy and JAXB

RESTEasy is JBOSS provided implementation of JAX-RS specification for building RESTful Web Services and RESTful Java applications. Though this is not limited to be used in JBOSS only, and you can use with other servers also.

JAXB on the other hand is used for mapping java classes to equivalent xml documents and vice versa. It is done using marshalling and and unmarshalling features of JAXB.

In this post, I am demonstrating the way to use JAXB with RESTEasy, to convert the API response in xml format.

Environment used:

1. RESTEasy 2.3.1.GA
2. RESTEasy JAXB provider 2.3.1
3. Tomcat 7
4. JDK 1.6

Follow below steps to build a demo application.

1) Create a maven project and convert to eclipse web project

mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.howtodoinjava -DartifactId=RESTfulDemoApplication 
-DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-webapp -DinteractiveMode=false

mvn eclipse:eclipse -Dwtpversion=2.0

2) Update runtime dependencies in pom.xml

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.howtodoinjava</groupId>
  <artifactId>RESTfulDemoApplication</artifactId>
  <packaging>war</packaging>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>RESTfulDemoApplication Maven Webapp</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
  <repositories>
   	<repository>
      <id>jboss</id>
      <url>http://repository.jboss.org/maven2</url>
   	</repository>
  </repositories>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>3.8.1</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <!-- core library -->
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
		 <artifactId>resteasy-jaxrs</artifactId>
		<version>2.3.1.GA</version>
	</dependency>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>net.sf.scannotation</groupId>
		<artifactId>scannotation</artifactId>
		<version>1.0.2</version>
	</dependency>
	<!-- JAXB support -->
   <dependency>
      <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
        <artifactId>resteasy-jaxb-provider</artifactId>
      <version>2.3.1.GA</version>
   </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <build>
    <finalName>RESTfulDemoApplication</finalName>
  </build>
</project>

3) Update web.xml file for resteasy specific servlet mapping

<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC
 "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN"
 "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd" >

<web-app>
  	<display-name>Archetype Created Web Application</display-name>
  	<!-- Auto scan REST service -->
	<context-param>
		<param-name>resteasy.scan</param-name>
		<param-value>true</param-value>
	</context-param>
	
	<servlet>
		<servlet-name>resteasy-servlet</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>
			org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServletDispatcher
		</servlet-class>
	</servlet>
 
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>resteasy-servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

4) Write a service class and model class

User.java

package com.howtodoinjava.model;
 
import java.io.Serializable;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAttribute;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;
 
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)
@XmlRootElement(name = "user")
public class User implements Serializable {
 
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
 
    @XmlAttribute(name = "id")
    private int id;
 
    @XmlElement(name = "firstName")
    private String firstName;
 
    @XmlElement(name = "lastName")
    private String lastName;
 
    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }
    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }
    public String getFirstName() {
        return firstName;
    }
    public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
    }
    public String getLastName() {
        return lastName;
    }
    public void setLastName(String lastName) {
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }
}

UserManagementModule.java

package com.howtodoinjava.service;

import javax.ws.rs.GET;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;
import javax.ws.rs.PathParam;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

import com.howtodoinjava.model.User;

@Path("/user-management")
public class UserManagementModule
{
	@GET
	@Path("/users/{id}")
	public Response getUserById(@PathParam("id") Integer id)
	{
		User user = new User();
		user.setId(id);
		user.setFirstName("Lokesh");
		user.setLastName("Gupta");
		return Response.status(200).entity(user).build();
	}
}

5) Run the application

When we deploy above built application in tomcat and hit the URL: ” http://localhost:8080/RESTfulDemoApplication/user-management/users/10″, below is the response.

Download Source code

Happy Learning !!