How can I create XML files from Servlets using JAXB?

Question

I just started JAX-B for writing XML files, I am able to create XML files from a java object and saving that file into a local path. I am doing this from a simple main method inside a java class by providing the path.

public static void main(String ...s){
    JAXBContext jaxbcntxtobject = JAXBContext.newInstance(Student.class);
    Marshaller marshallerObject = jaxbcntxtobject.createMarshaller();
    marshallerObject.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT,true);

    Student s1 = new Student(1, "Chanky Mallick","MCA");
    marshallerObject.marshal(s1, new FileOutputStream("e://StudentList.xml"));
}

But my main purpose is to do it from servlet or jsp so it can be saved into client machine as download.

How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

You need to:

1. write to the ServletOutputStream in your response rather than your FileOutputStream (JAXB will let you specify any subclass of an OutputStream )
2. set the returned type to be XML eg response.setContentType("text/xml")

You should probably set the content disposition such that the browser knows to download the content as a file and present the user with an option to save it under a given name eg

response.setHeader( "Content-Disposition", "filename=" + filename );