Trail: Java API for XML Processing (JAXP)

The Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) trail provides an introduction to Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) 1.4 technology, via examples of JAXP applications.

Before You Read This Tutorial

• The Java programming language and its development environment.
• The eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML)
• The Document Object Model (DOM), as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) DOM Working Group.
• Simple API for XML (SAX), as developed cooperatively by the members of the XML-DEV mailing list.

Some prior knowledge of DOM and SAX is assumed. Only code that is specific to the JAXP API is examined in detail in this tutorial.

Introduction to JAXP provides a brief description of the JAXP technology, including its purpose and principal features.

Simple API for XML introduces a concept used in the JAXP technology, the Simple API for XML (SAX): when to use SAX, how to parse an XML file, how to implement SAX validation, how to run the SAX parser, and how to handle lexical events. Links for further information are provided.

Document Object Model introduces the tree structure used by the Document Object Model (DOM) and shows you how to use the DOM functions to create nodes, remove nodes, change the contents of the nodes, and to traverse the node hierarchy.

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations includes information on how to write a Document Object Model as an XML file, and how to generate a DOM from an arbitrary data file in order to convert it to XML.

Streaming API for XML focuses a streaming Java technology-based, event-driven, pull-parsing API for reading and writing XML documents. StAX enables you to create bidirectional XML parsers that are fast, relatively easy to program, and have a light memory footprint.