Xstream's jodatime Local Date display

Question

I'm using xstrem to serialise a jodatime local date into xml. However when output the generated xml the LocalDate is not in an easily readable format. See below:

<date>
    <iLocalMillis>1316563200000</iLocalMillis>
    <iChronology class="org.joda.time.chrono.ISOChronology" reference="../../tradeDate/iChronology"/>

Any ideas how I can get xstream to display the date in a format that won't drive me up the wall?

Answer 1

Here's what I have used successfully. I believe I used the info at the link mentioned in the first post.

import java.lang.reflect.Constructor;

import org.joda.time.DateTime;

import com.thoughtworks.xstream.converters.Converter;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.converters.MarshallingContext;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.converters.UnmarshallingContext;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.HierarchicalStreamReader;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.HierarchicalStreamWriter;


public final class JodaTimeConverter implements Converter {

    @Override
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    public boolean canConvert(final Class type) {
            return (type != null) && DateTime.class.getPackage().equals(type.getPackage());
    }

    @Override
    public void marshal(final Object source, final HierarchicalStreamWriter writer,
            final MarshallingContext context) {
            writer.setValue(source.toString());
    }

    @Override
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    public Object unmarshal(final HierarchicalStreamReader reader,
            final UnmarshallingContext context) {
            try {
                    final Class requiredType = context.getRequiredType();
                    final Constructor constructor = requiredType.getConstructor(Object.class);
                    return constructor.newInstance(reader.getValue());
            } catch (final Exception e) {
                throw new RuntimeException(String.format(
                 "Exception while deserializing a Joda Time object: %s", context.getRequiredType().getSimpleName()), e);
            }
    }

}

You can register it like:

XStream xstream = new XStream(new StaxDriver());
xstream.registerConverter(new JodaTimeConverter());