Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

javax.xml.bind.annotation
Annotation Type XmlElementWrapper


@Retention(value=RUNTIME)
@Target(value={FIELD,METHOD})
public @interface XmlElementWrapper

Generates a wrapper element around XML representation. This is primarily intended to be used to produce a wrapper XML element around collections. The annotation therefore supports two forms of serialization shown below.

    //Example: code fragment
      int[] names;

    // XML Serialization Form 1 (Unwrapped collection)
    <names> ... </names>
    <names> ... </names>
 
    // XML Serialization Form 2 ( Wrapped collection )
    <wrapperElement>
       <names> value-of-item </names>
       <names> value-of-item </names>
       ....
    </wrapperElement>
 

The two serialized XML forms allow a null collection to be represented either by absence or presence of an element with a nillable attribute.

Usage

The @XmlElementWrapper annotation can be used with the following program elements:

The usage is subject to the following constraints:

See "Package Specification" in javax.xml.bind.package javadoc for additional common information.

Since:
JAXB2.0
See Also:
XmlElement, XmlElements, XmlElementRef, XmlElementRefs

Optional Element Summary
 String name
          Name of the XML wrapper element.
 String namespace
          XML target namespace of the XML wrapper element.
 boolean nillable
          If true, the absence of the collection is represented by using xsi:nil='true'.
 boolean required
          Customize the wrapper element declaration to be required.
 

name

public abstract String name
Name of the XML wrapper element. By default, the XML wrapper element name is derived from the JavaBean property name.

Default:
"##default"

namespace

public abstract String namespace
XML target namespace of the XML wrapper element.

If the value is "##default", then the namespace is determined as follows:

  1. If the enclosing package has XmlSchema annotation, and its elementFormDefault is QUALIFIED, then the namespace of the enclosing class.
  2. Otherwise "" (which produces unqualified element in the default namespace.

Default:
"##default"

nillable

public abstract boolean nillable
If true, the absence of the collection is represented by using xsi:nil='true'. Otherwise, it is represented by the absence of the element.

Default:
false

required

public abstract boolean required
Customize the wrapper element declaration to be required.

If required() is true, then the corresponding generated XML schema element declaration will have minOccurs="1", to indicate that the wrapper element is always expected.

Note that this only affects the schema generation, and not the unmarshalling or marshalling capability. This is simply a mechanism to let users express their application constraints better.

Since:
JAXB 2.1
Default:
false

Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

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For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

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