XML Examples

This release includes examples showing XML and how it can be used:
  1. Sample XML Files
  2. Printing a DOM Tree
  3. SAX Program to Count Tags

The example programs include a cross-platform ant build file that can be used to build and run the example. Ant is a build tool similar to make on Unix and nmake on WindowsNT that is also an XML application. To use ant, download it from the website and read the install docs. Alternatively, you can also view the ant build.xml file to see what needs to be done to manually compile and run an example program on your platform.


Sample XML Files

A handful of sample XML files have been provided in the "samples" subdirectory. Note that the links may not work depending on your browser environment. Please look in the "examples/samples" directory if the links do not display in your browser.

Printing a DOM Tree

One of the first things many programmers want to know is how to read an XML file and generate a DOM Document object from it. Use the DOMEcho example to learn how to do this in three steps. The important lines are:

        // Step 1: create a DocumentBuilderFactory and setNamespaceAware
        DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        dbf.setNamespaceAware(true);

        // Step 2: create a DocumentBuilder
        DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();

        // Step 3: parse the input file to get a Document object
        Document doc = db.parse(new File(filename));
    

The program also gives an example of using an error handler and of setting optional configuration options, such as validation. Finally, this program allows you to understand the DOM itself, because it