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I'm using the Maven jaxb2 plugin to generate a default value constructor for my generated JAXB classes. The problem that I'm having is that the ordering of the attributes/fields changes on different calls to generate-sources, and this changes the generated constructor as a result.

The attributes are defined in the schema as a collection of three attribute groups:

<xsd:attributeGroup name="CollectionAttributeGroup">
    <xsd:attributeGroup ref="AttributeGroupA"/>
    <xsd:attributeGroup ref="AttributeGroupB"/>
    <xsd:attributeGroup ref="AttributeGroupC"/>
</xsd:attributeGroup>

The attributes within each of the sub-groups (e.g. AttributeGroupA) will always be in the same order, but the order of the sub-groups seems to change with each call. This makes my constructors unusable, as there's no guarantee of the order of the fields, and each new build can break existing code.

Any ideas on how to enforce the ordering of attributes/fields?

Jaryn C.
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  • Should we assume you can't change your XSD ? – Patrice M. Mar 30 '12 at 23:23
  • `with each call` = each time you do JAXB marshalling, or each time you generate beans with maven? The later case cannot be fixed, as it looks like here and there sets are used in JAXB model, which do not guarantee the order of elements. – dma_k Apr 01 '12 at 21:45
  • @PatriceM.: Yes, the XSD is maintained by another entity and should not be changed. – Jaryn C. Apr 02 '12 at 16:11
  • @dma_k: The latter - each time I generate beans with Maven, the order of the fields in the generated classes is changed. Is there any documentation on what you mean by "here and there sets are used?" – Jaryn C. Apr 02 '12 at 16:13
  • I'm just guessing here, but it's a common side-effect of code-generators that iterations are often non-deterministic, because the underlying impl uses an intermediate collection that does not guarantee iteration order (e.g. java.util.HashSet). Normally it doesn't matter, as the generated code is strictly equivalent, except when it happens to matter like in your case. In fact, I'd argue this is an obvious bug in this plugin. But you might be in luck, it's open source, so you can file a defect or better (you guessed it) fix it yourself. I think that's be totally appropriate and cool. – Patrice M. Apr 02 '12 at 20:08

0 Answers0