JAXB and class instantiation

One thing that prevents from using a binding technology like JAXB, instead of a classic dom/sax-based xml technology is the fact that, when reading xml, it seems to be strongly oriented to instantiate the classes that it manages.

Many times, i want to read values from xml and set them to properties of already created instances.

Is there a simple way to tell JAXB that it has to appl开发者_Python百科y values to the class that i have instead of create a new one?

Use the JAXB objects as DTOs. Then you can use PropertyUtils.copyProperties(..) / BeanUtils.copyProperties(..) (from commons-beanutils) to transfer the properties to your already-partially-populated objects.