xml handling

[manish ahuja]

Hi there,

Traditionally I have been using JAXP or JDOM for handling xml payloads in java where we use the DOM or SAX api for handling xml.
Alternatively there are java2xml and viceversa api libraries available like JAXB, Castor and XMLBeans.
I was wondering when to go for raw xml handling using libraries like JAXP , JDOM and when to resort to java-xml bridging toolkits like castor.

Do post your thoughts on the same.

Thanks

[Pavel Cherkashin]

As far as raw nodes <-> fields bridge is considered, the Dom4j is very usable. It implements xpath and to access every node or attribute of the document is easy.

    
Document document = createDocument();//create some xml document
//gets the value of attribute <author name="...">
document.selectSingleNode("//root/author/@name").getStringValue();
//gets the value text inside the tag <author>
document.selectSingleNode("//root/author").getStringValue();

This tool works with raw xml and raw beans and abstract the developer from handling "nodeStarted" and "nodeEnded" etc.

[Pavel Cherkashin]

Of course if there is a reason to use more abstract binding, then it depends from special needs. Sometimes it is needed to specify the structure of the xml data. Sometimes it is needed to handle the inheritance of data beans. The large byte arrays and multi part data content - is a special topic. The validation of values is also form time to time being the topic to discuss when selecting the tool.

You're the driver.