About XStream

XStream is a simple library to serialize objects to XML and back again.

Features

Typical Uses

Known Limitations

If using the enhanced mode, XStream can re-instantiate classes that do not have a default constructor. However, if using a different JVM like an old JRockit version, a JDK 1.3 or you have restrictions because of a SecurityManager, a default constructor is required.

The enhanced mode is also necessary to restore final fields for any JDK < 1.5. This implies deserialization of instances of an inner class.

Getting Started

May 24, 2007 XStream 1.2.2 released

A maintenance release of XStream that contains a lot of bug fixes and has some minor highlights:

View the complete change log and download.

Note, that next version of XStream will behave slightly different by default. XStream emits all fields in declaration order like Java serialization. But in contrast to Java it will omit the fields of parent classes last while Java serialization emits them first. This makes it difficult to match a given XML schema that defined inherited types or leads sometimes to obscure initialization problems. However, XStream itself will not be affected by the changed order of elements in the XML, any deserialization of current XML representations will work fine. Anyway we will provide with XStream 1.3 a FieldKeySorter implementation that mimics the old behaviour. In the meanwhile you can enforce the new field sorting by installing the NaturalFieldKeySorter.