JAXB - Unmarshal XML String into Java Object

When trying to unmarshal XML to a Java object using JAXB you might want to pass the XML as a String. However, the unmarshal() method of the Unmarshaller interface does not support passing an XML String.

Following code sample illustrates how to solve this.

Wrap the XML String in a StringReader object and pass this to the unmarshal() method as shown below.

Note that an even shorter one-liner notation is also possible.

  public static Car unmarshal(String xml) throws JAXBException {
    JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(Car.class);
    Unmarshaller jaxbUnmarshaller = jaxbContext.createUnmarshaller();

    StringReader reader = new StringReader(xml);
    Car car = (Car) jaxbUnmarshaller.unmarshal(reader);

    LOGGER.info(car.toString());
    return car;
  }

Next, pass below string representation of an XML to the above unmarshal() method.

xml = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" "
  + "standalone=\"yes\"?>"
  + "<ns2:Car xmlns:ns2=\"com.codenotfound.jaxb.model\" id=\"ABC-123\">"
  + "<make>Passat</make>"
  + "<manufacturer>Volkswagen</manufacturer></ns2:Car>";

JAXB is now able to unmarshal the StringReader object and the result is the following:

Car [make=Passat, manufacturer=Volkswagen, id=ABC-123]

This concludes our short example on how to unmarshal an XML String. If you found this post helpful or have any questions or remarks, please leave a comment.