Mule ESB JAXB XML To Object Transformer Better Way? - jaxb

Question

Mule 3.3 can automatically unmarshall an XML string to an object using JAXB given that:
1. you first register your jaxb annotated classes with spring.
2. there is a component that requires such type as input
So I have managed to do the transformation, but I had to create a "DumbTransformer" that does nothing. It has a method that returns the same object it receives. I need it in order to trigger the XML to Object conversion so that I can further process the message.
Flow Example:
<spring:beans>
<spring:bean id="dumbTransformer" class="foo.bar.DumbTransformer"/>
</spring:beans>
<flow name="main" doc:name="main">
<vm:inbound-endpoint path="in" doc:name="VM" />
<component doc:name="Java">
<spring-object bean="dumbTransformer"/>
</component>
<splitter expression="#[payload.items]" doc:name="Split Items"/>
<logger message="#[payload]" level="INFO" doc:name="Log Item"/>
<vm:outbound-endpoint path="out" doc:name="VM" />
</flow>
DumbTransformer.java
package foo.bar;
#ContainsTransformerMethods
public class InvoiceUnmarshaller extends AbstractTransformer {
#Transformer
public MyJaxbAnnotatedClass foo(#Payload MyJaxbAnnotatedClass i) {
return i;
}
}
Is there a way to acomplish this without having to create such DumbTransformers?
Thanks.

Answer 1

As you guessed it, the JAXB deserialization doesn't occur because there is no component to satisfy:
there is a component that requires such type as input
So what if you had an auto-transformer to do just that:
<auto-transformer returnClass="foo.bar.MyJaxbAnnotatedClass" />

Answer 2

The Mule XML Module provides OOTB a JAXB Transformer. I would rather leverage mule capabilities whenever possible rather than writing custom code