Convert Java to XML using xstream

Question

I have started using the xstream library to convert from Java code to XML. My model java class is simple and given below:

class Person {
    String firstname;
    String lastname;    
    String age;
    public Person(String first, String last,String age) {
        firstname = first;
        lastname = last;
        this.age =  age;
    }
}

So using simple xstream API I am getting the output of the toXML method as below:

<Person>
  <firstname>David</firstname>
  <lastname>Goswami</lastname>
  <age>34</age>
</Person>

However, I want to tweak the output and get the string age as an attribute of the field firstname. In essence, I am expecting the xml output as below:

<Person>
  <firstname age="34">David</firstname>
  <lastname>Goswami</lastname>
 </Person>

Any help on how to do this would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use XStream.useAttributeFor() to declare a property to be serialized as an attribute:

xstream.useAttributeFor(Person.class, "age");