Re: Parsing XML with Java 1.4.2 own tools?
Donkey Hottie wrote:
"Steve W. Jackson" <stevewjackson@knology.net> wrote in
news:stevewjackson-D6EE88.14530212092008@news.individual.net:
Aside from the fact that your boss is an idiot, Java 1.4.2 *does*
include the ability to parse without *any* third party tools. Look
again at the API Javadocs.
Pay particular attention to the javax.xml.parsers package, where
you'll find the DocumentBuilderFactory that can provide instances
of
the DocumentBuilder class. While its name suggests that it builds
(as in creates new) documents, it also parses from existing data.
That is, it "builds" documents by parsing XML.
But but.. as I was talking about abstract classes and interfaces...
javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory IS an abstract class. API
doc does not tell about classes extending it!
Yup. But you can instantiate some concrete subclass of it using
DocumentBuilderFactory .newInstance(). There's an elaborate
mechanism for determining which concrete subclass that is (see
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/javax/xml/parsers/DocumentBuilderFactory.html#newInstance() )
, but for simple parsing of reasonably-sized documents, whichever you
get will be fine.
Having gotten your DocumentBuilderFactory , you can configure it with
the setXXX() methods, create DoucmentBuilders from it, and start
parsing things.