using SAX parser, how do you parse an xml file which has same name tags but in different elements?

Question

Is it possible to give path expressions in SAX parser? I have an XML file which has a few same name tags, but they are in different element. Is there any way to differentiate between them. Here is the XML:

<Schools>
    <School>
        <ID>335823</ID> 
        <Name>Fairfax High School</Name> 
        <Student>
            <ID>4195653</ID>
            <Name>Will Turner</Name>
        </Student>
        <Student>
            <ID>4195654</ID>
            <Name>Bruce Paltrow</Name>
        </Student>
        <Student>
            <ID>4195655</ID>
            <Name>Santosh Gowswami</Name>
        </Student>
    </School>
    <School>
        <ID>335824</ID> 
        <Name>FallsChurch High School</Name> 
        <Student>
            <ID>4153</ID>
            <Name>John Singer</Name>
        </Student>
        <Student>
            <ID>4154</ID>
            <Name>Shane Warne</Name>
        </Student>
        <Student>
            <ID>4155</ID>
            <Name>Eddie Diaz</Name>
        </Student>
    </School>
</Schools>

I want to differentiate between the Name and Id of a student from the name and ID of a school.

Thanks for the response:

I have created a student pojo which has the following fields- school_id,school_name, student_id and student_name and getter and setter methods for them. This is my temporary parser implementation. When i parse the xml, I need to put the values of school name, id , student name, id in the pojo and return it. Can you tell me on how I should implement the stack for the differentiation. This is my parser framework::

import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;

public class HandleXML extends DefaultHandler {

    private student info;
    private boolean school_id = false;
    private boolean school_name = false;
    private boolean student_id = false;
    private boolean student_name = false;
    private boolean student = false;
    private boolean school = false;


    public HandleXML(student record) {
        super();
        this.info = record;
        school_id = false;
        school_name = false;
        student_id = false;
        student_name = false;
        student = false;
        school = false;
    }

    @Override
    public void startElement(String uri, String localName,
            String qName, Attributes attributes)
            throws SAXException {
    if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("student")) {
            student = true;
        }
    if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("school")) {
            school_id = true;
        }
    if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("school_id")) {
            school_id = true;
        }
    if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("student_id")) {
            student_id = true;
        }
    if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("school_name")) {
            school_name = true;
        }
    if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("student_name")) {
            student_name = true;
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void endElement(String uri, String localName,
            String qName)
            throws SAXException {
    }

    @Override
    public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length)
            throws SAXException {

        String data = new String(ch, start, length);

    }
}

Answer 1

In a SAX parser you are given each element in document order. You have to maintain a stack to track nesting (push onto the stack when handling startElement, and pop for endElement). You can differentiate the different <Name> elements by what is currently on the stack.

Alternatively, just keep a variable that tells you if you've encountered a <School> tag or <Student> tag to tell you which type of <Name> you are seeing.

Answer 2

Well, I haven't played in years with SAX in Java, so here's my take on it:

package play.xml.sax;

import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;

import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Stack;

public class Test1 {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SAXParserFactory spf = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
        SchoolsHandler handler = new SchoolsHandler();
        try {
            SAXParser sp = spf.newSAXParser();
            sp.parse("schools.xml", handler);
            System.out.println("Number of read schools: " + handler.getSchools().size());
        } catch (SAXException se) {
            se.printStackTrace();
        } catch (ParserConfigurationException pce) {
            pce.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException ie) {
            ie.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

class SchoolsHandler extends DefaultHandler {
    private static final String TAG_SCHOOLS = "Schools";
    private static final String TAG_SCHOOL = "School";
    private static final String TAG_STUDENT = "Student";
    private static final String TAG_ID = "ID";
    private static final String TAG_NAME = "Name";

    private final Stack<String> tagsStack = new Stack<String>();
    private final StringBuilder tempVal = new StringBuilder();

    private List<School> schools;
    private School school;
    private Student student;

    public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes attributes) {
        pushTag(qName);
        tempVal.setLength(0);
        if (TAG_SCHOOLS.equalsIgnoreCase(qName)) {
            schools = new ArrayList<School>();
        } else if (TAG_SCHOOL.equalsIgnoreCase(qName)) {
            school = new School();
        } else if (TAG_STUDENT.equalsIgnoreCase(qName)) {
            student = new Student();
        }
    }

    public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length) {
        tempVal.append(ch, start, length);
    }

    public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName) {
        String tag = peekTag();
        if (!qName.equals(tag)) {
            throw new InternalError();
        }

        popTag();
        String parentTag = peekTag();

        if (TAG_ID.equalsIgnoreCase(tag)) {
            int id = Integer.valueOf(tempVal.toString().trim());
            if (TAG_STUDENT.equalsIgnoreCase(parentTag)) {
                student.setId(id);
            } else if (TAG_SCHOOL.equalsIgnoreCase(parentTag)) {
                school.setId(id);
            }
        } else if (TAG_NAME.equalsIgnoreCase(tag)) {
            String name = tempVal.toString().trim();
            if (TAG_STUDENT.equalsIgnoreCase(parentTag)) {
                student.setName(name);
            } else if (TAG_SCHOOL.equalsIgnoreCase(parentTag)) {
                school.setName(name);
            }
        } else if (TAG_STUDENT.equalsIgnoreCase(tag)) {
            school.addStudent(student);
        } else if (TAG_SCHOOL.equalsIgnoreCase(tag)) {
            schools.add(school);
        }
    }

    public void startDocument() {
        pushTag("");
    }

    public List<School> getSchools() {
        return schools;
    }

    private void pushTag(String tag) {
        tagsStack.push(tag);
    }

    private String popTag() {
        return tagsStack.pop();
    }

    private String peekTag() {
        return tagsStack.peek();
    }
}

class School {
    private int id;
    private String name;
    private List<Student> students = new ArrayList<Student>();

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public void addStudent(Student student) {
        students.add(student);
    }

    public List<Student> getStudents() {
        return students;
    }
}

class Student {
    private int id;
    private String name;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }
}

schools.xml contains your example XML. Please note that I crammed everything in a single file, but this is only for I was just playing around.

Answer 3

Yes, understanding xml using a SAX parser is generally a bit more complicated than working with DOM. basically, you need to maintain state/context in your SAX parser so that you can differentiate between those situations.

note, the other key to implementing a SAX handler is understanding that values may be split across multiple character events.

Answer 4

Sax is event based, via callbacks you can read the XML document serially. Sax is good for reading large XML documents as the whole document is not loaded into memory. You might want to look at Xpath , eg

XPathFactory xPathFactory = XPathFactory.newInstance();
XPath xPath = xPathFactory.newXPath();
String expression = "/Schools/school/ ...";
XPathExpression xPathExpression = xPath.compile(expression);
// Compile the expression to get a XPathExpression object.
Object result = xPathExpression.evaluate(xmlDocument);

Answer 5

private boolean isInStudentNode;
...................................................    

public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes attributes) throws SAXException {
    // enter node Student
    if(qName.equalEgnoreCase("Student"){
       isInStudentNode = true;
    }
    ...
}

public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName) throws SAXException {
    // end node Student
    if(qName.equalEgnoreCase("Student"){
       isInStudentNode = false;
       ...........
    }

    // end node Name (school|student)
    if(qName.equalEgnoreCase("Name"){
        if(isInStudentNode) student.setName(...);
        else school.setName(...);
    }
}

its work with me