I am trying to use the SimpleXML java library (by Niall Gallagher) to read an XML fragment whose content is text interspersed with 0 to n …. elements (the application I am working with supports a very minimalistic and filtered subset of HTML), i.e. for example:

...<value>text1<div>text2</div>text3<div>text4</div>text5</value>...

I am using the classes “Value” and “Div” like so:

package example;

public class Value {

    @ElementList(entry="div", type=Div.class, inline=true, required=false)
    private java.util.List<Div> divs;

    @Text(required=false)
    private String text;

    // misc. utils (toString() etc.) omitted...
}

and

package example;

public class Div {

    @Text(required=false)
    private String text;

    // misc. utils (toString() etc.) omitted...
}

But when I let this run the SiompleXML parser yields me an error:

    ...
    Text annotation @org.simpleframework.xml.Text(data=false, empty=, required=false) 
on field 'text' private transient java.lang.String example.Value.text 
used with elements in class example.Value org.simpleframework.xml.core.TextException: 
Text annotation @org.simpleframework.xml.Text(data=false, empty=, required=false) 
on field 'text' private transient java.lang.String example.Value.text 
used with elements in class example.Value
       at org.simpleframework.xml.core.TreeModel.validateText(TreeModel.java:376)
       at org.simpleframework.xml.core.TreeModel.validate(TreeModel.java:362)
       ...

(note: the linebreaks are mine – the entire eror message is on a single line)

I simply can’t make sense of that error message. Any idea what’s not correct here or what I am missing?