JAXB Problem

Question

Hi,
Using JAXB, I need to handle some XML with a structure something like this:
<root>
<parent>
<element1>A</element1>
<element2>B</element2>
<element3>C</element3>
<element3>D</element4>
</parent>
</root>
I can easily use JAXB to obtain an object representing the "parent" element, however to access the child elements of "parent", I seem to have to use the items() method on "parerent" which returns me a list, from which I can obtain an iterator to iterate through the elements. All the examples I have seen ot this then cast the child element to the appropriate type when getting it from the iterator, however, all the examples only ever seem to have one type of child element, so a cast can safely be used.
I have many different possible types of child element of "parent", so I cannot cast, because I do not know which type of element I will be dealing with.
Can anyone explain to me how this type of situation should be dealt with using JAXB?
TIA
Dave

Answer 1

Give all the different node classes the same base class and reference them through that. This is the first thing that comes to mind.