Need the proper object declaration for my XStream deserialization

Question

My XML:

<autocomplete>
  <url_template>http://api-public.netflix.com/catalog/titles/autocomplete?{-join|&amp;|term}</url_template>
  <autocomplete_item>
    <title short="Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back: Original Theatrical Version"></title>
  </autocomplete_item>
</autocomplete>

My Objects:

public class AutoCompleteList
{
public String url_template;
public List<AutocompleteItem> autocomplete_item;
}

public class AutocompleteItem
{
public Title title;
}

public class Title
{
@XStreamAlias("short")
public String Short;
}

My code:

XStream xstream = new XStream();
xstream.alias("autocomplete", AutoCompleteList.class);
xstream.alias("title", Title.class);
AutoCompleteList myObj = (AutoCompleteList)xstream.fromXML(stringFromStream);

I am unable to retrieve the "title short" value from the XML.

Also, if my XML has more than one set of autocomplete_item tags, xstream errors out complaining that there is a duplicate instance of autocomplete_item.

Any suggestions?

I have searched through the many questions here but nothing seemed to work for me.

Answer 1

For the short attribute, try adding an @XStreamAsAttribute annotation:

public class Title
{
  @XStreamAlias("short")
  @XStreamAsAttribute
  public String Short;
}

and call xstream.processAnnotations(Title.class) before you call fromXML.

For the multiple autocomplete_item issue you should use @XStreamImplicit

public class AutoCompleteList
{
  public String url_template;

  @XStreamImplicit(itemFieldName="autocomplete_item")
  public List<AutocompleteItem> autocomplete_item;
}

Again you'll need to call xstream.processAnnotations(AutoCompleteList.class) to tell XStream to read the annotations before you can call fromXML.