Step By Step guide to Read XML file in Java Using SAX Parser Example

Reading XML file in java using SAX Parser is little different than reading xml file in Java with DOM parser which we had discussed in last article of this series. This tutorial is can be useful for those who are new to the java world and got the requirement for read an xml file in java in their project or assignment, key feature of java is it provides built in class and object to handle everything which makes our task very easy. Basically this process of handling XML file is known as parsing means break down the whole string into small pieces using the special tokens.

Parsing can be done using two ways:

• Using DOM Parser
• Using SAX Parser

Read XML file in Java Using SAX Parser Example

In DOM parser we have seen that we have to follow simple three steps:

Ø Parse the XML file

Ø Create the java object

Ø Manipulate the object means we can read that object or add them to list or whatever function we want we can do

But in SAX Parser its little bit different.

SAX Parser: it’s an event based parsing it contains default handler for handling the events whenever SAX parser pareses the xml document and it finds the Start tag “<” and end tag”>” it calls corresponding handler method.

Though there are other ways also to get data from xml file e.g. using XPATH in Java which is a language like SQL and give selective data from xml file.

Sample Example of reading XML File – SAX Parser

Suppose we have this sample XML file bank.xml which contains account details of all accounts in a hypothetical bank:

<? xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8" ?>

< Bank >

< Account type = "saving" >

< Id > 1001 </ Id >

< Name > Jack Robinson </ Name >

< Amt > 10000 </ Amt >

</ Account >

< Account type = "current" >

< Id > 1002 </ Id >

< Name > Sony Corporation </ Name >

< Amt > 1000000 </ Amt >

</ Account >

</ Bank >

1. Create the SAX parser and parse the XML file: In this step we will take one factory instance from SAXParserFactory to parse the xml file this factory instance in turns give us instance of parser using the parse() method will parse the Xml file.

2. Event Handling: when Sax Parser starts the parsing whenever it founds the start or end tag it will invoke the corresponding event handling method which is public void startElement (…) and public void end Element (...).

3. Register the events: The class extends the Default Handler class to listen for callback events and we register this handler to sax Parser to notify us for call back event

Let see java code for all these steps

To represent data from our sample xml file we need one java domain object called Account:

package parser;

publicclass Account {

private String name ;

privateint id ;

privateint amt ;

private String type ;

public Account() {

}

public Account(String name, int id, int amt, String type) {

this . name = name;

this . amt = amt;

this . id = id;

this . type = type;

}

publicint getAmt() {

return amt ;

}

publicvoid setAmt( int amt) {

this . amt = amt;

}

publicint getId() {

return id ;

}

publicvoid setId( int id) {

this . id = id;

}

public String getName() {

return name ;

}

publicvoid setName(String name) {

this . name = name;

}

public String getType() {

return type ;

}

publicvoid setType(String type) {

this . type = type;

}

public String toString() {

StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();

sb.append( "Account Details - " );

sb.append( "Name:" + getName());

sb.append( ", " );

sb.append( "Type:" + getType());

sb.append( ", " );

sb.append( "Id:" + getId());

sb.append( ", " );

sb.append( "Age:" + getAmt());

sb.append( "." );

return sb.toString();

}

}

Sample Code for implementing SAX parser in Java

package parser;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.util.ArrayList;

import java.util.Iterator;

import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;

import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;

import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;

import org.xml.sax.Attributes;

import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;

publicclass ReadXMLFileUsingSaxparser extends DefaultHandler {

private Account acct ;

private String temp ;

private ArrayList<Account> accList = new ArrayList<Account>();

/** The main method sets things up for parsing */

publicstaticvoid main(String[] args) throws IOException, SAXException,

ParserConfigurationException {

//Create a "parser factory" for creating SAX parsers

SAXParserFactory spfac = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();

//Now use the parser factory to create a SAXParser object

SAXParser sp = spfac.newSAXParser();

//Create an instance of this class; it defines all the handler methods

ReadXMLFileUsingSaxparser handler = new ReadXMLFileUsingSaxparser();

//Finally, tell the parser to parse the input and notify the handler

sp.parse( "bank.xml" , handler);

handler.readList();

}

/*

* When the parser encounters plain text (not XML elements),

* it calls(this method, which accumulates them in a string buffer

*/

publicvoid characters( char [] buffer, int start, int length) {

temp = new String(buffer, start, length);

}

/*

* Every time the parser encounters the beginning of a new element,

* it calls this method, which resets the string buffer

*/

publicvoid startElement(String uri, String localName,

String qName, Attributes attributes) throws SAXException {

temp = "" ;

if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase( "Account" )) {

acct = new Account();

acct .setType(attributes.getValue( "type" ));

}

}

/*

* When the parser encounters the end of an element, it calls this method

*/

publicvoid endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName)

throws SAXException {

if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase( "Account" )) {

// add it to the list

accList .add( acct );

} elseif (qName.equalsIgnoreCase( "Name" )) {

acct .setName( temp );

} elseif (qName.equalsIgnoreCase( "Id" )) {

acct .setId(Integer.parseInt( temp ));

} elseif (qName.equalsIgnoreCase( "Amt" )) {

acct .setAmt(Integer.parseInt( temp ));

}

}

privatevoid readList() {

System. out .println( "No ofthe accounts in bank '" + accList .size() + "'." );

Iterator<Account> it = accList .iterator();

while (it.hasNext()) {

System. out .println(it.next().toString());

}

}

}

Output:
No of the accounts in bank '2'.
Account Details - Name:Jack Robinson, Type:saving, Id:1001, Age:10000.
Account Details - Name:Sony Corporation, Type:current, Id:1002, Age:1000000.

Advantage of SAX parser in Java:

It is faster than DOM parser because it will not load the XML document into the memory .its an event based.

Read more: http://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2011/12/parse-read-xml-file-java-sax-parser.html#ixzz2ki8zt0cQ