I decided to RTFM - looks like your answer is spot on: http://castor.codehaus.org/1.2/xml-mapping.html#2.2-Unmarshalling-Behavior
> When Castor finds an element while unmarshalling a document, it will try > to use the mapping information to determine which object to instantiate. > If no mapping information is present, Castor will use the name of the > element to try to guess the name of a class to instantiate (for example, > for an element named 'test-element', Castor will try to instantiate a > class named 'TestElement' if no information is given in the mapping file). > Castor will then use the field information of the mapping file to handle > the content of the element. > > If the class is not described in the mapping file, Castor will instrospect > the class using the Java Reflection API to determine if there is any > function of the form getXxxYyy()/setXxxYyy( > <type> > x). This accessor will be associated with XML element/attribute named > 'xxx-yyy'. In the future, we will provide a way to override this default > behavior. > > ... I was hoping to find a xml ORM that would do all this on the fly without need of mapping file and/or skeleton class; seems I am expecting too much, and anyway i'm not sure how desireable this is from a dev perspective. -- View this message in context: http://camel.465427.n5.nabble.com/castor-unmarshal-without-mapping-file-tp5765569p5765666.html Sent from the Camel - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
