Is there an easier way to parse XML in Java?

user_135180 0
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I'm trying to figure out how to parse some XML (for an Android app), and it seems pretty ridiculous how difficult it is to do in Java. It seems like it requires creating an XML handler which has various callbacks (startElement, endElement, and so on), and you have to then take care of changing all this data into objects. Something like this tutorial.

All I really need is to change an XML document into a multidimensional array, and even better would be to have some sort of Hpricot processor. Is there any way to do this, or do I really have to write all the extra code in the example above?

android xml java
13 Answers

Try http://simple.sourceforge.net, its an XML to Java serialization and binding framework, its fully compatible with Android and is very lightweight, 270K and no dependencies.

ng_218960

In my opinion, using XPath for parsing XML may be your easiest coding approach. You can embody the logic for pulling out nodes from an XML document in a single expression, rather than having to write the code to traverse the document's object graph.

I note that another posted answer to this question already suggested using XPath. But not yet for your Android project. As of right now, the XPath parsing class is not yet supported in any Android release (even though the javax.xml namespace is defined in the Dalvik JVM, which could fool you, as it did me at first).

Inclusion of XPath class in Android is a current work item in late phase. (It is being tested and debugged by Google as I write this). You can track the status of adding XPath to Davlik here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=515

(It's an annoyance that you cannot assume things supported in most Java VMs are included yet in the Android Dalvik VM.)

Another option, while waiting for official Google support, is JDOM, which presently claims Dalvik VM compatibility and also XPath support (in beta). (I have not checked this out; I'm just repeating current claims from their web site.)

user_2867130

A couple of weeks ago I battered out a small library (a wrapper around javax.xml.stream.XMLEventReader) allowing one to parse XML in a similar fashion to a hand-written recursive descent parser. The source is available on github, and a simple usage example is below. Unfortunately Android doesn't support this API but it is very similar to the XmlPullParser API, which is supported, and porting wouldn't be too time-consuming.

accept("tilesets");
    while (atTag("tileset")) {
        String filename = attrib("file");
        File tilesetFile = new File(filename);
        if (!tilesetFile.isAbsolute()) {
            tilesetFile = new File(FilenameUtils.concat(file.getParent(), filename));
        }
        int tilesize = Integer.valueOf(attrib("tilesize"));
        Tileset t = new Tileset(tilesetFile, tilesize);
        t.setID(attrib("id"));
        tilesets.add(t);

        accept();
        close();
    }
close();

expect("map");

int width       = Integer.valueOf(attrib("width"));
int height      = Integer.valueOf(attrib("height"));
int tilesize    = Integer.valueOf(attrib("tilesize"));
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