simple-DOM

The simple and lightweight DOM parser for XML.

Overview

The XML is powerful, but is too complex. In general, we only use a few features of XML in our development. Most time, we only want to find nodes and get their values. The node's order, relation etc. usually needless.

• DOM APIs (org.w3c.dom) have full supporting of XML features, but it is slow and difficult to use.
• SAX APIs (org.xml.sax) are really fast, but it is difficult to use when you handle large complex structure XML.

Features

• simple, simple is the best
• fast to parsing XML.
• easy to get nodes' values

Requirements & Dependencies

• Require JDK 1.6+
• Require SAX (org.xml.sax) Library

Simple XML format

• Only leaf nodes, which have no child element, contain text.
• Only contain start-tag, text, and end-tag.

Example:

<items>
    <item id="apple">
        <name lang="en">Apple</name>
        <name lang="ja">りんご</name>
        <price>120</price>
        <count>20</count>
    </item>
    <item id="banana">
        <name lang="en">Banana</name>
        <price>150</price>
        <count>10</count>
    </item>
    <item id="pine">
        <name lang="en">Pine</name>
        <price>160</price>
        <count>5</count>
    </item>
</items>

Usage

// Parse XML
XML root = XML.parse(/* XML written above */);

// get Apple in Japanese
root.query("item/name(@lang=='ja')").asString(); // りんご

// get banana's price
root.query("item(@id='banana')/price").asInteger(); // 150

// get 3rd item's count
root.query("item[2]/count").asInteger(); // 5

// get number of item
root.get("item").length() // 3

// iterate item
for(XML item : root.get("item")) {
    System.out.print(item.get("@id").asString() + " "); // apple banana pine
}