StAX API

StAX API

The StAX API exposes methods for iterative, event-based processing of XML documents. XML documents are treated as a filtered series of events, and infoset states can be stored in a procedural fashion. Moreover, unlike SAX, the StAX API is bidirectional, enabling both reading and writing of XML documents.

The StAX API is really two distinct API sets: a  cursor   API and an  iterator   API. These two API sets explained in greater detail later in this chapter, but their main features are briefly described below.

Cursor API

As the name implies, the StAX  cursor   API represents a cursor with which you can walk an XML document from beginning to end. This cursor can point to one thing at a time, and always moves forward, never backward, usually one infoset element at a time.

The two main cursor interfaces are  XMLStreamReader   and  XMLStreamWriter .  XMLStreamReader   includes accessor methods for all possible information retrievable from the XML Information model, including document encoding, element names, attributes, namespaces, text nodes, start tags, comments, processing instructions, document boundaries, and so forth; for example:

public interface XMLStreamReader {
  public int next() throws XMLStreamException;
  public boolean hasNext() throws XMLStreamException;
  public String getText();
  public String getLocalName();
  public String getNamespaceURI();
  // ... other methods not shown
} 

You can call methods on  XMLStreamReader , such as  getText   and  getName , to get data at the current cursor location.  XMLStreamWriter   provides methods that correspond to  StartElement   and  EndElement event types; for example:

public interface XMLStreamWriter {
  public void writeStartElement(String localName) \
    throws XMLStreamException;
  public void writeEndElement() \
    throws XMLStreamException;
  public void writeCharacters(String text) \
    throws   XMLStreamException;
// ... other methods not shown
} 

The cursor API mirrors SAX in many ways. For example, methods are available for directly accessing string and character information, and integer indexes can be used to access attribute and namespace information. As with SAX, the cursor API methods return XML information as strings, which minimizes object allocation requirements.

Iterator API

The StAX  iterator   API represents an XML document stream as a set of discrete event objects. These events are pulled by the application and provided by the parser in the order in which they are read in the source XML document.

The base iterator interface is called  XMLEvent , and there are subinterfaces for each event type listed in  Table 3-2 , below. The primary parser interface for reading iterator events is  XMLEventReader , and the primary interface for writing iterator events is  XMLEventWriter . The  XMLEventReader   interface contains five methods, the most important of which is  nextEvent() , which returns the next event in an XML stream.XMLEventReader   implements  java.util.Iterator , which means that returns from  XMLEventReader   can be cached or passed into routines that can work with the standard Java Iterator; for example:

public interface XMLEventReader extends Iterator {
  public XMLEvent nextEvent() throws XMLStreamException;
  public boolean hasNext();
  public XMLEvent peek() throws XMLStreamException;
  ...
} 

Similarly, on the output side of the iterator API, you have:

public interface XMLEventWriter {
  public void flush() throws XMLStreamException;
  public void close() throws XMLStreamException;
  public void add(XMLEvent e) throws XMLStreamException;
  public void add(Attribute attribute) \
    throws XMLStreamException;
  ...
} 

Iterator Event Types

Table 3-2   lists the thirteen  XMLEvent   types defined in the event iterator API.

Table 3-2 XMLEvent Types 

Event Type

Description

StartDocument

Reports the beginning of a set of XML events, including encoding, XML version, and standalone properties.

StartElement

Reports the start of an element, including any attributes and namespace declarations; also provides access to the prefix, namespace URI, and local name of the start tag.

EndElement

Reports the end tag of an element. Namespaces that have gone out of scope can be recalled here if they have been explicitly set on their corresponding   StartElement .

Characters

Corresponds to XML   CData   sections and   CharacterData   entities. Note that ignorable whitespace and significant whitespace are also reported as   Character   events.

EntityReference

Character entities can be reported as discrete events, which an application developer can then choose to resolve or pass through unresolved. By default, entities are resolved. Alternatively, if you do not want to report the entity as an event, replacement text can be substituted and reported as   Characters .

ProcessingInstruction

Reports the target and data for an underlying processing instruction.

Comment

Returns the text of a comment

EndDocument

Reports the end of a set of XML events.

DTD

Reports as   java.lang.String   information about the DTD, if any, associated with the stream, and provides a method for returning custom objects found in the DTD.

Attribute

Attributes are generally reported as part of a   StartElement   event. However, there are times when it is desirable to return an attribute as a standalone   Attribute   event; for example, when a namespace is returned as the result of an   XQuery   or   XPath   expression.

Namespace

As with attributes, namespaces are usually reported as part of a   StartElement , but there are times when it is desirable to report a namespace as a discrete   Namespace   event.

Note that the  DTD ,  EntityDeclaration ,  EntityReference ,  NotationDeclaration , and  ProcessingInstruction   events are only created if the document being processed contains a DTD.

Sample Event Mapping

As an example of how the event iterator API maps an XML stream, consider the following XML document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<BookCatalogue xmlns="http://www.publishing.org">
  <Book>
    <Title>Yogasana Vijnana: the Science of Yoga</Title>
    <ISBN>81-40-34319-4</ISBN>
    <Cost currency="INR">11.50</Cost>
  </Book>
</BookCatalogue> 

This document would be parsed into eighteen primary and secondary events, as shown below. Note that secondary events, shown in curly braces ({} ), are typically accessed from a primary event rather than directly.

Table 3-3 Sample Iterator API Event Mapping 

#

Element/Attribute

Event

1

version="1.0"

StartDocument

2

isCData = false
data = "\n"
IsWhiteSpace = true

Characters

3

qname = BookCatalogue:http://www.publishing.org
attributes = null
namespaces = {BookCatalogue" -> http://www.publishing.org"}

StartElement

4

qname = Book
attributes = null
namespaces = null

StartElement

5

qname = Title
attributes = null
namespaces = null

StartElement

6

isCData = false
data = "Yogasana Vijnana: the Science of Yoga\n\t"
IsWhiteSpace = false

Characters

7

qname = Title
namespaces = null

EndElement

8

qname = ISBN
attributes = null
namespaces = null

StartElement

9

isCData = false

data = "81-40-34319-4\n\t"

IsWhiteSpace = false

Characters

10

qname = ISBN
namespaces = null

EndElement

11

qname = Cost
attributes = {"currency" -> INR}
namespaces = null

StartElement

12

isCData = false
data = "11.50\n\t"
IsWhiteSpace = false

Characters

13

qname = Cost
namespaces = null

EndElement

14

isCData = false
data = "\n"
IsWhiteSpace = true

Characters

15

qname = Book
namespaces = null

EndElement

16

isCData = false
data = "\n"
IsWhiteSpace = true

Characters

17

qname = BookCatalogue:http://www.publishing.org
namespaces = {BookCatalogue" -> http://www.publishing.org"}

EndElement

18

 

EndDocument

There are several important things to note in the above example:

The events are created in the order in which the corresponding XML elements are encountered in the document, including nesting of elements, opening and closing of elements, attribute order, document start and document end, and so forth.

As with proper XML syntax, all container elements have corresponding start and end events; for example, every   StartElement   has a corresponding   EndElement , even for empty elements.

Attribute   events are treated as secondary events, and are accessed from their corresponding   StartElement   event.

Similar to   Attribute   events,   Namespace   events are treated as secondary, but appear twice and are accessible twice in the event stream, first from their corresponding   StartElement   and then from their corresponding   EndElement .

Character   events are specified for all elements, even if those elements have no character data. Similarly,   Character   events can be split across events.

The StAX parser maintains a namespace stack, which holds information about all XML namespaces defined for the current element and its ancestors. The namespace stack is exposed through the javax.xml.namespace.NamespaceContext   interface, and can be accessed by namespace prefix or URI.

Choosing Between Cursor and Iterator APIs

It is reasonable to ask at this point, "What API should I choose? Should I create instances of  XMLStreamReader   or  XMLEventReader ? Why are there two kinds of APIs anyway?"

Development Goals

The authors of the StAX specification targeted three types of developers:

Library and infrastructure developers  - Create application servers, JAXM, JAXB, JAX-RPC and similar implementations; need highly efficient, low-level APIs with minimal extensibility requirements.

J2ME developers   - Need small, simple, pull-parsing libraries, and have minimal extensibility needs.

J2EE and J2SE developers   - Need clean, efficient pull-parsing libraries, plus need the flexibility to both read and write XML streams, create new event types, and extend XML document elements and attributes.

Given these wide-ranging development categories, the StAX authors felt it was more useful to define two small, efficient APIs rather than overloading one larger and necessarily more complex API.

Comparing Cursor and Iterator APIs

Before choosing between the cursor and iterator APIs, you should note a few things that you can do with the iterator API that you cannot do with cursor API:

Objects created from the   XMLEvent   subclasses are immutable, and can be used in arrays, lists, and maps, and can be passed through your applications even after the parser has moved on to subsequent events.

You can create subtypes of   XMLEvent   that are either completely new information items or extensions of existing items but with additional methods.

You can add and remove events from an XML event stream in much simpler ways than with the cursor API.

Similarly, keep some general recommendations in mind when making your choice:

If you are programming for a particularly memory-constrained environment, like J2ME, you can make smaller, more efficient code with the cursor API.

If performance is your highest priority--for example, when creating low-level libraries or infrastructure--the cursor API is more efficient.

If you want to create XML processing pipelines, use the iterator API.

If you want to modify the event stream, use the iterator API.

If you want to your application to be able to handle pluggable processing of the event stream, use the iterator API.