JAXB does not call Setter method

Question

I cannot understand what am I doing wrong. I want to unmarshall an xml using JAXB, but i noticed that setter method wasn't called. I am using Java 1.5. Getters and Setters in Attribute.java class - work correctly, but in Configuration.java class - Setter method doesn't call. Can you please show me where am I wrong?

@XmlRootElement(name="configuration")
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)
public class Configuration {    
    public List< Configuration> getItems() {
        return new ArrayList<Attribute>(getMap().values());
    }

    @XmlElement(name="attributes")
    public void setItems(List<Attribute> attributes) {
        getMap().clear();
        for (Attribute attribute : attributes) {
            getMap().put(attribute.getName(), attribute);
        }
    }

    private Map<String, Attribute> map;

    public Map<String, Attribute> getMap() {

        if (map == null) {
            map = new HashMap<String, Attribute>();
        }
        return map;
    }
}

My XML looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
   <attributes name="some_name" type="calculation" value="select ? from dual" priority="0"/>
</configuration>

Answer 1

If a List is returned from the getter a JAXB impl will use that to add the collection items to instead of creating a new one and setting it via the setter.

The purpose of this is to give you the chance to initialize the implementation of List that best fits your domain model.