How to bind dynamic xml with Java objects without xsd

Question

have a question, and hope someone here can help me.
In my current project, I will get a xml file, containing some information of each user, and map them into a set of user objects.
For each user, there are some fixed attributes, such as name, phone#, age, position, etc. The problem is, client can customize, and add new attibutes, such as address, favorite color, so there will be no xsd for the xml.
What I want to do, is map fixed attributes to user object attributes, for example, name attribute to User.name, and they will have corresponding getters, and setters, but for custom attributes, I want to add them to a HashMap in User object, for example, use string "ADDRESS" as the key, and address as the value.
Is there any way I can do this? Thank you very much for any help you can provide.

Answer 1

It would not be too hard to do in regular code.
First, make a HashSet with the Strings for the names of the known attributes that will be processed with setters.
Then, get the NamedNodeMap via getAttributes(). That will give you all attributes -- both the ones you will handle with your setters and the ones you will handle via a HashMap.
Then, loop through the NamedNodeMap. For each attribute, get the name and value. If the name is in the HashSet of known values, process it with a list of
if ( attName.equals( "name" ))
    whatever.setName( value );
   continue;
}If it is not in the HashSet, then set the value into your HashMap with the name and value.
There is no standard way to do this.
Dave Patterson