java - wsimport - how to generate service endpoint classes and JAXB classes in separate projects/folders

Question

We are using a top-down approach for a project with multiple web services (multiple WSDL's). Each web service needs to be set up as a separate project and deployed as a separate war.

The problem is that the WSDL's share a few common .xsd files. Currently if we run wsimport for each WSDL, the common JAXB classes are being duplicated in each web service project.

Ideally we would want to generate the JAXB classes separately in a common shared project, and then reuse the JAXB classes project in each of the web service projects, but wsimport does not provide the option to skip the JAXB class generation OR to specify a different location for the JAXB classes.

Any thoughts on how I can share the JAXB classes between different JAX-WS web service endpoints?

Answer 1

I know that this question is very old, but I wanted to share the answer for those that are looking. I know it took me a while to find the answer.

As of JAXB 2.1 RI, there's a feature called "episodes" that you can use to facilitate this.

Let's say you have a schema called myschema.xsd. Then you would want to call the following:

xjc -episode myschema.episode myschema.xsd

This also works if you are compiling multiple xsd files using a single call. The call will produce the bindings as well as the myschema.episode file.

The episode file is a special bindings file. You can then use this file with wsimport, like so:

wsimport mywsdl.wsdl -b myschema.episode

wsimport will now use the previously generated JAXB files, and will generate anything that is missing.

See this page for more information.