XML serialization in Java?

XStream is pretty good at serializing object to XML without much configuration and money! (it's under BSD license).

We used it in one of our project to replace the plain old java-serialization and it worked almost out of the box.

"Simple XML Serialization" Project

You may want to look at the Simple XML Serialization project. It is the closest thing I've found to the System.Xml.Serialization in .Net.

2008 Answer The "Official" Java API for this is now JAXB - Java API for XML Binding. See Tutorial by Oracle. The reference implementation lives at http://jaxb.java.net/

2018 Update Note that the Java EE and CORBA Modules are deprecated in SE in JDK9 and to be removed from SE in JDK11. Therefore, to use JAXB it will either need to be in your existing enterprise class environment bundled by your e.g. app server, or you will need to bring it in manually.