unwanted elements in the xml

Question

I have following DTO

@XStreamAlias("outline")
public class OutlineItem implements java.io.Serializable {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = -2321669186524783800L;

    @XStreamAlias("text")
    @XStreamAsAttribute
    private String text;

    @XStreamAsAttribute
    @XStreamImplicit
    private List<OutlineItem> childItems;
}

once i do

XStream stream = new XStream();
stream.processAnnotations(OutlineItem.class);
stream.toXML(outlineItem.getChildItems()); //This is a List of all the child items

i get this as my output text

<List>
    <outline text="Test Section1">
        <outline text="Sub Section1 1">
        </outline>
        <outline text="Sub Section1 2">
        </outline>
    </outline>
    <outline text="Test Section 2">
        <outline text="Test Section2 1">
        </outline>
    </outline>
</List>

whereas i want the output to be:

<outline text="Test Section1">
    <outline text="Sub Section1 1">
    </outline>
    <outline text="Sub Section1 2">
    </outline>
</outline>
<outline text="Test Section 2">
    <outline text="Test Section2 1">
    </outline>
</outline>

How do i get rid of the Initial List tag? any help is greatly appreciated.

PS> This is a extension of the question i had asked a couple of weeks back

Can this be achieved by XSLT at all?

Answer 1

The XSLT answer is immediate:

• identity transformation (a variant seems enough given your input sample)
• "uncopy" List rule

[XSLT 1.0]

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="*">
  <xsl:copy>
  <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="List">
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>