Where to include jaxb.properties file?

Question

I have REST (Jersey) webservice that makes use of some data objects that are marshalled/unmarshalled to/from XML. The data objects are in a separate project/jar that the webservice war depends on.

I'm using MOXy as my JAXB implementation since I'm deploying to Glassfish and that's already included. I know I need a jaxb.properties file to set the JAXB implementation to MOXy with this entry:

javax.xml.bind.context.factory=org.eclipse.persistence.jaxb.JAXBContextFactory

The question is, should the jaxb.properties file be included in the data object jar or in the webservice war or both?

Answer 1

You package the jaxb.properties file with your model classes. GlassFish does not include the MOXy bundle yet, but you can add it easily. Check out my blog for more info:

• http://bdoughan.blogspot.com/2010/08/creating-restful-web-service-part-35.html

Answer 2

If you don't want or can not use the jaxb.properties (you have a lot of package, the model is in a external jar, you want only java and no configuration files...), you can directly specify the JaxbContextFactory :

Do not create the context using :

JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(new Class[]{Person.class, ObjectFactory.class}, properties);

But instead, specify the factory to use :

JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContextFactory.createContext(new Class[]{Person.class, ObjectFactory.class}, properties);

where the factory is :

import org.eclipse.persistence.jaxb.JAXBContextFactory;

It is exactly the same, but it is specified explicitly in the java code instead of implicitly in a configuration file.