Can you tell me best way to read an XML file in Java with sample code? XML content be like below.
<table sourceName="person" targetName="person">
<column sourceName="id" targetName="id"/>
<column sourceName="name" targetName="name"/>``
</table>
I would use JAXB, try this, it works
public class Test1 {
@XmlAttribute
String sourceName;
@XmlAttribute
String targetName;
@XmlElement(name = "column")
List<Test1> columns;
public static Test1 unmarshal(File file) {
return JAXB.unmarshal(file, Test1.class);
}
}
You could use Simple form simple XML serialization:
import org.simpleframework.xml.Serializer;
import org.simpleframework.xml.core.Persister;
public class App {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
String xml = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n"
+ "<table sourceName=\"person\" targetName=\"person\">\n"
+ " <column sourceName=\"id\" targetName=\"id\"/>\n"
+ " <column sourceName=\"name\" targetName=\"name\"/>``\n"
+ "</table>";
Serializer serializer = new Persister();
Table table = serializer.read(Table.class, xml);
System.out.println(table.getSourceName());
System.out.println(table.getTargetName());
for (Column colunmn : table.getColumns()) {
System.out.println(colunmn.getSourceName());
System.out.println(colunmn.getTargetName());
}
}
}
Table
:
import java.util.List;
import org.simpleframework.xml.Attribute;
import org.simpleframework.xml.ElementList;
import org.simpleframework.xml.Root;
@Root(name = "table")
public class Table {
@Attribute
private String sourceName;
@Attribute
private String targetName;
@ElementList(name = "column", inline = true)
private List<Column> columns;
public Table() {
}
public String getSourceName() {
return sourceName;
}
public void setSourceName(String sourceName) {
this.sourceName = sourceName;
}
public String getTargetName() {
return targetName;
}
public void setTargetName(String targetName) {
this.targetName = targetName;
}
public List<Column> getColumns() {
return columns;
}
public void setColumns(List<Column> columns) {
this.columns = columns;
}
}
Column
:
import org.simpleframework.xml.Attribute;
import org.simpleframework.xml.Root;
@Root(name = "column")
public class Column {
@Attribute
private String sourceName;
@Attribute
private String targetName;
public Column() {
}
public String getSourceName() {
return sourceName;
}
public void setSourceName(String sourceName) {
this.sourceName = sourceName;
}
public String getTargetName() {
return targetName;
}
public void setTargetName(String targetName) {
this.targetName = targetName;
}
}
Since it's a very small XML file, I would use DOM parsing, you can find a full example here:
http://www.mkyong.com/java/how-to-read-xml-file-in-java-dom-parser/
But in essence:
File fXmlFile = new File("/Users/mkyong/staff.xml");
DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = dBuilder.parse(fXmlFile);
NodeList nList = doc.getElementsByTagName("table");
for (int temp = 0; temp < nList.getLength(); temp++) {
Node tableNode = nList.item(temp);
Element tableElement = (Element) tableNode;
System.out.println("Table source name: " + tableElement.getAttribute("sourceName"));
System.out.println("Table target name: " + tableElement.getAttribute("targetName"));
NodeList columnList = tableElement.getElementsByTagName("column");
for (int j = 0; j < columnList.getLength(); j++) {
Node columnNode = columnList.item(j);
Element columnElement = (Element) columnNode;
System.out.println("Column source name: " + columnElement.getAttribute("sourceName"));
System.out.println("Column target name: " + columnElement.getAttribute("targetName"));
}
}
Please see the relevant imports at the top of the example.
Hope it helps,
A.
Books have been written on the subject, and it all depends. JAXB is a good choice if the structure of the file is simple and stable (it maps elements/attributes to Java classes, and you don't want to be changing and recompiling your Java classes three times a week).
Otherwise there's a range of generic tree models - DOM is the most widely used, oldest, and worst; I would recommend JDOM2 or XOM.
But the ideal is to avoid reading the data into Java at all; the "XRX" or "end-to-end XML" principle is to use XML-oriented languages such as XSLT and XQuery for the entire application, perhaps calling into Java support routines occasionally if you really need to.