Placemark.description cannot hold CDATA or unescaped HTML

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The description element of placemark is used by GE for content inside the 
balloon. The body content of <description> can be either plain text or 
HTML. If HTML is written into <description>, JAXB escapes the left bracket 
and right bracket into XML entities.

While it still works, in a KML with 250+ placemarks and <description> in 
each placemark, this behavior has taken the file size to 281 KB from 170 
KB when outputting with DOM.

Although its now deprecated, I did find a solution for this: 
https://jaxb.dev.java.net/faq/JaxbCDATASample.java. 

My suggested solutions:
1. Add methods for elements like description to output as CDATA, ie 
placemark.withDescriptionAsCdata("foo")

or

2. Add a method to Kml to allow the developer to use something like a 
serializer: 

public boolean marshall(ContentHandler handler) {
    try {
        m = this.createMarshaller();
        JAXBElement<Kml> jaxbRootElement = new JAXBElement<Kml>(new QName
("http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2", "kml"), Kml.class, this);
        m.marshal(jaxbRootElement, handler);
        return true;
    } catch (JAXBException _x) {
        _x.printStackTrace();
        return false;
    }
}

By the way, keep up the great work! I was looking into using JAXB directly 
to refactor a servlet generating KML with DOM, but this saved tons of time.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by john.le...@turkeyhill.com on 26 Aug 2009 at 3:43

[GoogleCodeExporter]

There wasn't a place to select the type. I would consider this as an 
enhancement, 
except maybe that Kml doesn't allow a ContentHandler for marshalling even 
though 
JAXB does.

Original comment by john.le...@turkeyhill.com on 26 Aug 2009 at 3:45

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by bachmann...@gmail.com on 26 Aug 2009 at 8:06

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I added the public boolean marshal(ContentHandler) {...} method. (in r30.
http://code.google.com/p/javaapiforkml/source/detail?r=30)

Please let me know, if it is enough and you're now able to serialize your CDATA 
code
correctly.

Original comment by bachmann...@gmail.com on 27 Aug 2009 at 2:26

[GoogleCodeExporter]

just give me a moment more, until I release r31...

Original comment by bachmann...@gmail.com on 27 Aug 2009 at 2:51

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by bachmann...@gmail.com on 28 Aug 2009 at 8:12

• Changed state: Fixed

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I set up my code like the JAXB FAQ suggested, but for whatever reason the 
serializer 
just won't pick up on the description element. I 
tried "^description", "description", ":description"... no dice.

Oh well... thanks for the enhancement. The marshaller does use the 
ContentHandler. 
Hopefully the JAXB team will change the FAQ to a way that isn't deprecated.

Original comment by john.le...@turkeyhill.com on 28 Aug 2009 at 4:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Is this really fixed?  I am struggling to get this to work.  I have tried used 
the  https://jaxb.dev.java.net/faq/JaxbCDATASample.java solution but it does 
not affect the 'description' element in any way.  Anyone have any success?

Original comment by nkhosra...@gmail.com on 27 Jul 2011 at 4:33

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Anyone fixed the problem?
It still does not work.

This is my code:
outputFormat.setCDataElements( new String[] { "description"}); 

             outputFormat.setPreserveSpace(true);
             outputFormat.setIndenting(true);
             org.apache.xml.serialize.XMLSerializer  xmlSerializer=new org.apache.xml.serialize.XMLSerializer  (fileWriter,outputFormat);           
             kml.marshal(xmlSerializer.asContentHandler());

Original comment by ahwangyu...@gmail.com on 28 Mar 2013 at 2:17