What Java XML library do you recommend (to replace

Question

I'm looking for something like dom4j, but without dom4j's warts, such as bad or missing documentation and seemingly stalled development status.

Background: I've been using and advocating dom4j, but don't feel completely right about it because I know the library is far from optimal (example: see how methods in XSLT related Stylesheet class are documented; what would you pass to run() as the String mode parameter?)

Requirements: The library should make basic XML handling easier than it is when using pure JDK (javax.xml and org.w3c.dom packages). Things like this:

• Read an XML document (from file or String) into an object, easily traverse and manipulate the DOM, do XPath queries and run XSLT against it.
• Build an XML document in your Java code, add elements and attributes and data, and finally write the document into a file or String.

I really like what dom4j promises, actually: "easy to use, open source library for working with XML, XPath and XSLT [...] with full support for DOM, SAX and JAXP." And upcoming dom4j 2.0 does claim to fix everything: fully utilise Java 5 and add missing documentation. But unfortunately, if you look closer:

Warning: dom4j 2.0 is in pre-alpha stage. It is likely it can't be compiled. In case it can be compiled at random it is likely it can't run. In case it runs occasionally it can explode suddenly. If you want to use dom4j, you want version 1.6.1. Really.

...and the website has said that for a long time. So is there a good alternative to dom4j? Please provide some justification for your preferred library, instead of just dumping names and links. :-)

Answer 1

you can try JAXB, with annotations its very handy and simple to do: Java Architecture for XML Binding.

Answer 2

I'll add to the built-in answer by @kdgregory by saying why not JAXB?

With a few annotations its pretty easy to model most XML documents. I mean your probably going to parse the stuff and put in an object right?

JAXB 2.0 is built in to JDK 1.6 and unlike many other builtin javax libraries this one is pretty good (Kohusuke worked on it so you know its good).

Answer 3

Sure, XOM :-)

XOM is designed to be easy to learn and easy to use. It works very straight-forwardly, and has a very shallow learning curve. Assuming you're already familiar with XML, you should be able to get up and running with XOM very quickly.

I use XOM for several years now, and I still like it very much. Easy to use, plenty of documentation and articles on the web, API doesn't change between releases. 1.2 was released recently.

XOM is the only XML API that makes no compromises on correctness. XOM only accepts namespace well-formed XML documents, and only allows you to create namespace well-formed XML documents. (In fact, it's a little stricter than that: it actually guarantees that all documents are round-trippable and have well-defined XML infosets.) XOM manages your XML so you don't have to. With XOM, you can focus on the unique value of your application, and trust XOM to get the XML right.

Check out web page http://www.xom.nu/ for FAQ, Cookbook, design rationale, etc. If only everything was designed with so much love :-)

Author also wrote about What's Wrong with XML APIs (and how to fix them). (Basically, reasons why XOM exists in the first place)

Here is also 5-part Artima interview with author about XOM, where they talk about what's wrong with XML APIs, The Good, the Bad, and the DOM, A Design Review of JDOM, Lessons Learned from JDOM and finally Design Principles and XOM.

Answer 4

In a recent project I had to do some XML parsing, and ended up using Simple Framework, recommended by a colleague.

I was quite happy with it in the end. It uses an annotation-based approach of mapping XML elements and attributes to Java classes and fields.

<example>
  <a>
    <b>
      <x>foo</x>
    </b>
    <b>
      <y>bar</y>
    </b>
  </a>
</example>

Corresponding Java code:

@Root
public class Example {

   @Path("a/b[1]")
   @Element
   private String x;

   @Path("a/b[2]")
   @Element
   private String y;
}

It's all quite different from dom4j or XOM. You avoid writing silly, boilerplatey XML handling code, but at first you'll probably bang your head against a wall for a while trying to get the annotations right.

(It was me who asked this question 4 years ago. While XOM seems a decent and quite popular dom4j replacement, I haven't come to fully embrace it. Curious that no-one had mentioned Simple Framework here. I decided to fix that, as I'd probably use it again.)

Answer 5

I've always liked jdom. It was written to be more intuitive than DOM parsing(and SAX parsing always seems clumsy anyway).

From the mission statement:

There is no compelling reason for a Java API to manipulate XML to be complex, tricky, unintuitive, or a pain in the neck. JDOMTM is both Java-centric and Java-optimized. It behaves like Java, it uses Java collections, it is completely natural API for current Java developers, and it provides a low-cost entry point for using XML.

That's pretty much been my experience - fairly intuitive navigation of node trees.