String with xml not getting rendered properly

Question

I am using jaxb marshal to convert java object to xml. My convert method looks like this:

protected String marshallerEx(Tickets tickets) throws JAXBException {

    JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(Tickets.class);
    Marshaller jaxbMarshaller = jaxbContext.createMarshaller();

    jaxbMarshaller.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, true);
    StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();

    // Marshal the tickets list in console
    jaxbMarshaller.marshal(tickets, sw);

    LOGGER.info("marshal -> " + sw.toString());

    return sw.toString();
}

The problem here is when i print it in logs, the return is coming in proper format. for example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<tickets>
    <ticket>
        <assignedQueueId>61</assignedQueueId>
        <category>11</category>
        <cause>0</cause>
        <createDate>2015-08-19T13:34:18-04:00</createDate>
        <customFields/>
    </ticket>
</tickets>

but when i return it to be displayed on screen(in browser) from my controller, it shows like this:

"<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?>\n<tickets>\n    <ticket>\n        <assignedQueueId>61</assignedQueueId>\n        <category>11</category>\n        <cause>0</cause>\n        <createDate>2015-08-19T13:34:18-04:00</createDate>\n        <customFields/>\n    </ticket>\n</tickets>\n"

why is it changing the format? what do i need to do to keep the format maintained to display it on screen the same way as its in my logs?

it is not clear from the question how does string representation of xml get displayed in a browser — Aleksandr Erokhin, Aug 27 '15 at 17:37
@AlexErohin: i am returning the same string back to browser. I want to see it in the same format like its getting displayed in logs but somehow its getting changed totally — user9517536248, Aug 27 '15 at 17:41
How does this string get displayed in a browser? Is it written out by a servlet as a response or is it displayed as a part of html page? What html component is responsible for displaying it? ( It might also be responsible for escaping string characters.) — Aleksandr Erokhin, Aug 27 '15 at 18:14
@AlexErohin: i'm returning it as `ResponseEntity(marshallerEx(tickets), HttpStatus.OK);` — user9517536248, Aug 27 '15 at 18:23

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

I suggest you to manually set content-type of RestController response either to application/xml (if you want browser to render xml tree) or to text/plain (if you want it to display plain text only). This would force the expected representation.

HttpHeaders responseHeaders = new HttpHeaders();
responseHeaders.set("content-type", "text/plain");
return new ResponseEntity<String>(marshallerEx(tickets), responseHeaders, HttpStatus.OK);

Also, seems like a similar problem is described in this thread.

String with xml not getting rendered properly

1 Answers1