Module jakarta.xml.bind
Package jakarta.xml.bind

Class DatatypeConverter

java.lang.Object
jakarta.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter
public final class DatatypeConverter extends Object

The javaType binding declaration can be used to customize the binding of an XML schema datatype to a Java datatype. Customizations can involve writing a parse and print method for parsing and printing lexical representations of a XML schema datatype respectively. However, writing parse and print methods requires knowledge of the lexical representations ( XML Schema Part2: Datatypes specification ) and hence may be difficult to write.

This class makes it easier to write parse and print methods. It defines static parse and print methods that provide access to a Jakarta XML Binding provider's implementation of parse and print methods. These methods are invoked by custom parse and print methods. For example, the binding of xsd:dateTime to a long can be customized using parse and print methods as follows: 

    // Customized parse method 
    public long myParseCal( String dateTimeString ) {
        java.util.Calendar cal = DatatypeConverter.parseDateTime(dateTimeString);
        long longval = convert_calendar_to_long(cal); //application specific
        return longval;
    }
     
    // Customized print method
    public String myPrintCal( Long longval ) {
        java.util.Calendar cal = convert_long_to_calendar(longval) ; //application specific
        String dateTimeString = DatatypeConverter.printDateTime(cal);
        return dateTimeString;
    }

There is a static parse and print method corresponding to each parse and print method respectively in the DatatypeConverterInterface.

The static methods defined in the class can also be used to specify a parse or a print method in a javaType binding declaration.

Jakarta XML Binding Providers are required to call the setDatatypeConverter api at some point before the first marshal or unmarshal operation (perhaps during the call to JAXBContext.newInstance). This step is necessary to configure the converter that should be used to perform the print and parse functionality.

A print method for a XML schema datatype can output any lexical representation that is valid with respect to the XML schema datatype. If an error is encountered during conversion, then an IllegalArgumentException, or a subclass of IllegalArgumentException must be thrown by the method.

Since:
1.6, JAXB 1.0
See Also: