XMLBeans is a Java-to-XML binding framework which is part of the Apache Software Foundation XML project.

XMLBeans is a tool that allows access to the full power of XML in a Java friendly way. The idea is to take advantage of the richness and features of XML and XML Schema and have these features mapped as naturally as possible to the equivalent Java language and typing constructs. XMLBeans uses XML Schema to compile Java interfaces and classes that can then be used to access and modify XML instance data. Using XMLBeans is similar to using any other Java interface/class: with methods like getFoo or setFoo, just as when working with Java. While a major use of XMLBeans is to access XML instance data with strongly typed Java classes there are also APIs that allow access to the full XML infoset (XMLBeans keeps XML Infoset fidelity) as well as to allow reflection into the XML schema itself through an XML Schema Object model.

Large XML Schema support: XMLBeans fully supports XML Schema and the corresponding java classes provide constructs for all of the major functionality of XML Schema. This is critical since often one has no control over the features of XML Schema needed to work with in Java. Also, XML Schema oriented applications can take full advantage of the power of XML Schema and not have to restrict themselves to a subset.

Large XML Infoset support: When unmarshalling an XML instance the full XML infoset is kept and is available to the developer. This is critical because that subset of XML is not easily represented in Java. For example, order of the elements or comments might be needed in a particular application.

A major objective of XMLBeans has been its applicability in all non-streaming (in memory) XML programming situations. The developer should be able to compile their XML Schema into a set of Java classes and know that they will be able to:

To accomplish the above objectives, XMLBeans provides three major APIs:

XmlObject: The java classes that are generated from an XML Schema are all derived from XmlObject. These provide strongly typed getters and setters for each of the elements within the defined XML. Complex types are in turn XmlObjects. For example, getCustomer might return a CustomerType (which is an XmlObject). Simple types turn into simple getters and setters with the correct java type. For example, getName might return a String.

XmlCursor: From any XmlObject the developer can get an XmlCursor. This provides efficient, low level access to the XML Infoset. A cursor represents a position in the XML instance. The cursor can be moved around the XML instance at any level of granularity needed from individual characters to Tokens.