XML related api in JDK

Question

I find there are a lot of packages in jdk 6 are xml related. such as:

• com.sun.org.apache.xerces.*
• com.sun.org.apache.xml.*
• com.sun.org.apache.xpath.*
• javax.xml.*
• org.w3c.dom.*
• org.w3c.xml.*

as a java newbie, I want to know, how these xml related api orgnized? what can they do in xml related programing? please also mention the third part library those can do samilary job.

I used to use dom4j to do xml to object transform, and now I find we can using jaxb, which is built in jdk.

Answer 1

There are several APIs in the JDK

• javax.xml.parers - APIs for DOM/SAX parsing
  • org.w3c.dom - DOM related classes
  • org.xml.sax - SAX related classes
• javax.xml.stream - APIs for StAX (pull) parsing
• java.xml.bind - APIs for converting domain objects to/from XML.
• javax.xml.transform - Transforming one XML document to another using a XSLT stylesheet.
• javax.xml.validation - APIs for performing Schema validation
• javax.xml.xpath - APIs for querying an XML document.

Using these APIs together

These APIs can be used together in many different ways (below are examples from my blog):

• You could use the javax.xml.validation APIs to validate an object with JAXB annotations:
  • http://blog.bdoughan.com/2010/11/validate-jaxb-object-model-with-xml.html
• You could use the javax.xml.transform APIs to transform an object with JAXB annotations:
  • http://blog.bdoughan.com/2012/11/using-jaxb-with-xslt-to-produce-html.html
• You could apply a SAX XMLFilter to a SAX parser to affect how JAXB objects are unmarshalled:
  • http://blog.bdoughan.com/2012/11/applying-namespace-during-jaxb-unmarshal.html
• You could unmarshal from a StAX XMLStreamReader to convert the middle of an XML document to objects.
  • http://blog.bdoughan.com/2012/08/handle-middle-of-xml-document-with-jaxb.html

Note:

The com.sun.org.apache APIs are from the implementations of the standard XML APIs included in the JDK, I would recommend not using them directly. There are also alternate implementations of these standard APIs that can also be used that offer extensions beyond their corresponding specifications.

Answer 2

Maybe you need JAXB: JAXB example. For me, Jaxb covers all needs in java.