I'm using JAXB to read and write XML. What I want is to use a base JAXB class for marshalling and an inherited JAXB class for unmarshalling. This is to allow a sender Java application to send XML to another receiver Java application. The sender and receiver will share a common JAXB library. I want the receiver to unmarshall the XML into a receiver specific JAXB class which extends the generic JAXB class.

Example:

This is the common JAXB class which is used by the sender.

@XmlRootElement(name="person")
public class Person {
    public String name;
    public int age;
}

This is the receiver specific JAXB class used when unmarshalling the XML. The receiver class has logic specific to the receiver application.

@XmlRootElement(name="person")
public class ReceiverPerson extends Person {
    public doReceiverSpecificStuff() ...
}

Marshalling works as expected. The problem is with unmarshalling, it still unmarshals to Person despite the JAXBContext using the package name of the subclassed ReceiverPerson.

JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(package name of ReceiverPerson);

What I want is to unmarshall to ReceiverPerson. The only way I've been able to do this is to remove @XmlRootElement from Person. Unfortunately doing this prevents Person from being marshaled. It's as if JAXB starts at the base class and works its way down until it finds the first @XmlRootElement with the appropriate name. I've tried adding a createPerson() method which returns ReceiverPerson to ObjectFactory but that doesn't help.

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