Controlling namespace prefixes in JAXB

Question

How does jaxb determine the list of namespace prefix declarations whem marshalling an object? I used xjc to compile java classes for ebics (ebics schema). When I create an i

Answer 1

JAXB always adds all namespaces that are known by the JAXBContext to the root element of the XML document for performance reasons. See this comment by Kohsuke on JAXB-103 for more information.

The only way I found to deal with this, is to traverse the document myself after it has been created with JAXB and remove all unused namespaces using the following helper class:

public class RemoveUnusedNamespaces {

    private static final String XML_NAMESPACE_SCHEMA_INSTANCE = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance";

    private static final String XML_NAMESPACE_NAMESPACE = "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/";

    private interface ElementVisitor {

        void visit(Element element);

    }

    public void process(Document document) {
        final Set namespaces = new HashSet();

        Element element = document.getDocumentElement();
        traverse(element, new ElementVisitor() {

            public void visit(Element element) {
                String namespace = element.getNamespaceURI();
                if (namespace == null)
                    namespace = "";
                namespaces.add(namespace);
                NamedNodeMap attributes = element.getAttributes();
                for (int i = 0; i < attributes.getLength(); i++) {
                    Node node = attributes.item(i);
                    if (XML_NAMESPACE_NAMESPACE.equals(node.getNamespaceURI()))
                        continue;
                    String prefix;
                    if (XML_NAMESPACE_SCHEMA_INSTANCE.equals(node.getNamespaceURI())) {
                        if ("type".equals(node.getLocalName())) {
                            String value = node.getNodeValue();
                            if (value.contains(":"))
                                prefix = value.substring(0, value.indexOf(":"));
                            else
                                prefix = null;
                        } else {
                            continue;
                        }
                    } else {
                        prefix = node.getPrefix();
                    }
                    namespace = element.lookupNamespaceURI(prefix);
                    if (namespace == null)
                        namespace = "";
                    namespaces.add(namespace);
                }
            }

        });
        traverse(element, new ElementVisitor() {

            public void visit(Element element) {
                Set removeLocalNames = new HashSet();
                NamedNodeMap attributes = element.getAttributes();
                for (int i = 0; i < attributes.getLength(); i++) {
                    Node node = attributes.item(i);
                    if (!XML_NAMESPACE_NAMESPACE.equals(node.getNamespaceURI()))
                        continue;
                    if (namespaces.contains(node.getNodeValue()))
                        continue;
                    removeLocalNames.add(node.getLocalName());
                }
                for (String localName : removeLocalNames)
                    element.removeAttributeNS(XML_NAMESPACE_NAMESPACE, localName);
            }

        });
    }

    private final void traverse(Element element, ElementVisitor visitor) {
        visitor.visit(element);
        NodeList children = element.getChildNodes();
        for (int i = 0; i < children.getLength(); i++) {
            Node node = children.item(i);
            if (node.getNodeType() != Node.ELEMENT_NODE)
                continue;
            traverse((Element) node, visitor);
        }
    }

}