How to marshall a string using JAXB that sometimes contains XML content and sometimes does not?

Question

Consider this example -

I have a class called Report that has a field of type Message. The Message class has a field called \"body\" which is a string. \"body\" can

Answer 1

If its only for Marshalling, and to ignore the < and >, We can use the following:

marshaller.setProperty("com.sun.xml.bind.marshaller.CharacterEscapeHandler",
                new CharacterEscapeHandler() {
                    @Override
                    public void escape(char[] ac, int i, int j, boolean flag,
                            Writer writer) throws IOException {
                        writer.write(ac, i, j);
                    }
                });