I apologize if this is discussed elsewhere; I tried finding a solution to my problem, but to no avail.
When marshalling to produce xml from my objects, if a String is null, then a NullPointerException is thrown. I found that if I set usage="optional", then the exception went away, but an empty tag was not output to the xml. I thought that if I then provided a default value, then that default would be used when a null String was encountered.
My mapping xml looks like this:
<value name="IssueAge" field="issueAge" usage="optional" default="" />
However, setting a default here doesn't seem to work; I still don't get an empty tag. Due to requirements, I must include an empty tag if the data is not set (e.g. it is not an option for me to not output a tag if no value exists).
Am I missing something here or is jibx currently not able to do this? If this functionality doesn't exist, I would be happy to code this if there is interest.
If necessary, I can work around this problem by setting all of my String objects in the class files to an empty string, but this is not preferred. If I do this, then it will output <IssueAge></IssueAge>, which leads me to my next question. Is there a way to have jibx output the consolidated form of an empty element (<IssueAge />)?
Thank you in advance,
Paul
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Paul Poole
J2EE Developer
Business Process Automation
Conseco
Carmel, IN 46032
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