Best way to store large amounts of data
Greetings!
I have some code that will parse through XML data one character at a time, determine if it's an opening or closing tag, what the tag name is, and what the value between the tags is. All of the results are saved in a 2D string array. Each parent result can have a variable number of child results associated with it and it is possible to have over 2,000 parent results.
Currently, I initialize a new string that I will use to store the values at the beginning of the method.
String[][] initialXMLValues =new String[2000][45]
I have no idea how many results will actually be returned when the method is initially called, so I don't know what to do besides make initialXMLValues around the maximum values I expect to have.
As I parse through the XML, I look for a predefined tag that signifies the start of a result. Each tag/value that follows is stored in a single element of an arraylist in the form "tagname,value". When I reach the closing parent tag, I convert the arraylist to a String[], store the size of the array if it is bigger than the previous array (to track the maximum size of the child results), store it in initialXMLValues[i.] (<- peroid to avoid post showing up in italics), then increment i
When I'm all done parsing, I create a new String String[][] XMLValues =new String[i][j]
, where i is equal to the total number of parent results (from last paragraph) and j is equal to the maximum number of child results. I then use a nested for loop to store all of the values from initialXMLValues into XMLValues. The whole point of this is to minimize the overall size of the returned String Array and minimize the number of null valued fields.
I know this is terribly inefficient, but I don't know a better way to do it. The problem is having to have the size of the array initilized before I really know how many results I'm going to end up storing. Is there a better way to do this?
