Details
Bug
Closed
Major
Description
Attached is a simple test program to see how the marshalling and unmarshalling with a String with umlauts worked. Unfortunately it fails since the call to xml.getBytes() in DOMXMLReaderDriver will return a sequence of bytes using the platform's default charset. Using a call like xml.getBytes("UTF-8") does work, but it would be great to have the ability to specify the encoding dynamically so that marshalling and unmarshalling the XML can be done using the proper character encoding.
Activity
Using the to/fromXML methods in XStream is really only convenience. If you are actually doing any real work you should be creating your own XMLReader and XMLWriter and if you do so you will probably use an underlying Reader or Writer which can deal with your encoding issues.
A couple utility method for the underlying implementation you are dealing with and away you go.
I'm not really sure if those methods need to be change to deal with encoding issues.
Jason van Zyl
added a comment - Using the to/fromXML methods in XStream is really only convenience. If you are actually doing any real work you should be creating your own XMLReader and XMLWriter and if you do so you will probably use an underlying Reader or Writer which can deal with your encoding issues.
A couple utility method for the underlying implementation you are dealing with and away you go.
I'm not really sure if those methods need to be change to deal with encoding issues. I was able to workaround the issue by doing something as follows:
DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = documentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document xmlDocument = documentBuilder.parse(new InputSource(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(myXMLFile), UTF8)));
DomXMLReader domXMLReader = new DomXMLReader(xmlDocument);
BlogEntry blogEntry = (BlogEntry) xstream.fromXML(domXMLReader);
However, I do think some notion of encoding should be added to the public XMLReader createReader(String xml) as the default encoding will change across platforms and on most systems the default encoding is not something as friendly as UTF-8.
David Czarnecki
added a comment - I was able to workaround the issue by doing something as follows:
DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = documentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document xmlDocument = documentBuilder.parse(new InputSource(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(myXMLFile), UTF8)));
DomXMLReader domXMLReader = new DomXMLReader(xmlDocument);
BlogEntry blogEntry = (BlogEntry) xstream.fromXML(domXMLReader);
However, I do think some notion of encoding should be added to the public XMLReader createReader(String xml) as the default encoding will change across platforms and on most systems the default encoding is not something as friendly as UTF-8. Yup. I agree. I shall try and get this into the 1.5 release.
Joe Walnes
added a comment - Yup. I agree. I shall try and get this into the 1.5 release. Okay, done.
You can now specify an encoding when constructing the DomDriver.
XStream xstream = new XStream(..., ..., ..., new DomDriver("UTF-8"));
Joe Walnes
added a comment - Okay, done.
You can now specify an encoding when constructing the DomDriver.
XStream xstream = new XStream(..., ..., ..., new DomDriver("UTF-8")); 
The following new method should fix the issue:
package com.thoughtworks.xstream.xml.dom;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.xml.CannotParseXMLException;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.xml.XMLReader;
import com.thoughtworks.xstream.xml.XMLReaderDriver;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.FactoryConfigurationError;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
public class DomXMLReaderDriver implements XMLReaderDriver {
// ... other methods
public XMLReader createReader(String xml, String encoding) {
{ DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = documentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder(); ByteArrayInputStream inputStream = new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.getBytes(encoding)); Document document = documentBuilder.parse(inputStream); return new DomXMLReader(document); }try
catch (FactoryConfigurationError e)
{ throw new CannotParseXMLException(e); } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) { throw new CannotParseXMLException(e); }catch (SAXException e)
{ throw new CannotParseXMLException(e); } catch (IOException e) { throw new CannotParseXMLException(e); }}
}