Simple conversion between java.util.Date and XMLGregorianCalendar

Why not use an external binding file to tell XJC to generate java.util.Date fields instead of XMLGregorianCalendar?

Also see How do I map xs:date to java.util.Date? Blog

I had to make some changes to make it work, as some things seem to have changed in the meantime:

• xjc would complain that my adapter does not extend XmlAdapter
• some bizarre and unneeded imports were drawn in (org.w3._2001.xmlschema)
• the parsing methods must not be static when extending the XmlAdapter, obviously

Here's a working example, hope this helps (I'm using JodaTime but in this case SimpleDate would be sufficient):

import java.util.Date;
import javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.XmlAdapter;
import org.joda.time.DateTime;

public class DateAdapter extends XmlAdapter<Object, Object> {
    @Override
    public Object marshal(Object dt) throws Exception {
        return new DateTime((Date) dt).toString("YYYY-MM-dd");
    }

    @Override
        public Object unmarshal(Object s) throws Exception {
        return DatatypeConverter.parseDate((String) s).getTime();
    }
}

In the xsd, I have followed the excellent references given above, so I have included this xml annotation:

<xsd:appinfo>
    <jaxb:schemaBindings>
        <jaxb:package name="at.mycomp.xml" />
    </jaxb:schemaBindings>
    <jaxb:globalBindings>
        <jaxb:javaType name="java.util.Date" xmlType="xsd:date"
              parseMethod="at.mycomp.xml.DateAdapter.unmarshal"
          printMethod="at.mycomp.xml.DateAdapter.marshal" />
    </jaxb:globalBindings>
</xsd:appinfo>

From java.util.Date to XMLGregorianCalendar you can simply do:

import javax.xml.datatype.XMLGregorianCalendar;
import javax.xml.datatype.DatatypeFactory;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;
......
GregorianCalendar gcalendar = new GregorianCalendar();
gcalendar.setTime(yourDate);
XMLGregorianCalendar xmlDate = DatatypeFactory.newInstance().newXMLGregorianCalendar(gcalendar);

Code edited after the first comment of @f-puras, by cause i do a mistake.

From XMLGregorianCalendar to java.util.Date you can simply do:

java.util.Date dt = xmlGregorianCalendarInstance.toGregorianCalendar().getTime();