This note is for Groovy 1.8 and JDOM 1.1.1.

The following Groovy function converts an XML string to a JDOM element:

import org.jdom.Element
import org.jdom.input.SAXBuilder
// import org.jdom.Document
import java.io.StringReader
 
Element convert2Element(String xmlstr)
{
  def stringReader = new StringReader(xmlstr)
  def builder = new SAXBuilder()
  def doc = builder.build(stringReader)
  def elem = doc.getRootElement()
  return elem.detach()
}