Cannot apply @XStreamConverter ToAttributedValueConverter

Question

I want some XML tree classes to unmarshall as text nodes, but couldn't get the thing to work in my use case : an abstract class hierarchy.

I tried to register the converter programmatically, to declare it over concrete classes (API doc even says that inherited fields are handled).

@Bean
public Marshaller marshaller() {
    XStreamMarshaller marshaller = new XStreamMarshaller();
    marshaller.setAutodetectAnnotations(true);
    return marshaller;
}
@XStreamConverter(value = ToAttributedValueConverter.class, strings = "value")
public abstract class AbstractProp {
    @XStreamAsAttribute
    private final String name;
    private final String value;
}
@XStreamAlias("boolProp")
public class BoolProp extends AbstractProp {
    public BoolProp(String name, Boolean value) {
        super(name, value.toString());
    }
}

EXPECTED <boolProp name="foobar">false</boolProp>

ACTUAL <boolProp name="foobar"><value>false</value></boolProp>

Answer 1

Ok. I found in the source code what's wrong with inheritance:

public class ToAttributedValueConverter implements Converter {
...
@Override
public boolean canConvert(final Class<?> type) {
    return this.type == type;
}

So I made this as a workaround:

public class TextNodeConverter extends ToAttributedValueConverter {

private final Class<?> type;

public TextNodeConverter(Class type, Mapper mapper, ReflectionProvider reflectionProvider, ConverterLookup lookup) {
    this(type, mapper, reflectionProvider, lookup, null, null);
}

public TextNodeConverter(Class type, Mapper mapper, ReflectionProvider reflectionProvider, ConverterLookup lookup,
        String valueFieldName) {
    this(type, mapper, reflectionProvider, lookup, valueFieldName, null);
}

public TextNodeConverter(Class type, Mapper mapper, ReflectionProvider reflectionProvider, ConverterLookup lookup,
        String valueFieldName, Class valueDefinedIn) {
    super(type, mapper, reflectionProvider, lookup, valueFieldName, valueDefinedIn);
    this.type = type;
}

@Override
public boolean canConvert(final Class type) {
    return this.type.isAssignableFrom(type);
}
}

And, well... after commuting the converter, that worked like a charm :-)