Spring Boot Integrated xstream Quick Start Demo

1. What is xstream?

XStream is a simple Java-based library that serializes Java objects into XML and vice versa (i.e., can easily convert Java objects to xml documents to and from them).

XStream Features:

• Easy to use — XStream’s API provides a high-level look and feel to simplify common use cases.
• There is no need to create a mapping — XStream’s API provides default mapping for most object serialization.
• performance — XStream is fast and has a low memory footprint, making it ideal for large object graphs or systems.
• Clean XML — XStream creates a clean and compact XML result, which is easy to read.
• There is no need to modify the object — XStream serializes internal fields, such as private and final fields, with support for non-public and internal classes. The default constructor is not mandatory.
• Full object graph support — XStream allows you to keep repeated references encountered in the object model and supports circular references.
• Customizable conversion strategies — Customization policies can allow specific types of customizations to be represented as XML registrations.
• Security framework — XStream provides a fair control over the types of ungrouping to prevent manipulating input security issues.
• Error messages — When an exception occurs due to malformed XML, XStream throws a uniform exception that provides a detailed diagnosis to resolve the issue.
• Another output format — XStream supports other output formats such as JSON.

2. XStream basic usage

Create an XStream object

Create an XStream object by passing a StaxDriver through it. StaxDriver uses the SAX parser (available from Java 6), a fast XML parser.

XStream xstream = new XStream(new StaxDriver());

Serialize objects to XML

Use the toXML() method to get the XML string representation of the object.

String xml = xstream.toXML(student);

Deserialize the XML to get the object

Use the fromXML() method to extract the data from the XML object.