New to XML+Java: which is the best API?
Hi,
I am new to XML+Java and I am trying to develop an application that will both read and write to an XML file. After reading some tutorials, I decided that jaxp, sax, and org.w3c.dom.* are rather low-level and very unfriendly.
After a cursory web search, I came to the conclusion (please correct me if I am wrong) that JDOM and DOM4J are the most easy-to-use free APIs. So I would like to ask which one of the two (or any other API) is the "best"? With "best" I mean larger user base, better documentation, more features, less bugs, active development community (i.e. if a bug gets discovered, it will be fixed). I don't want to start building my application, just to realise 6 months later that the API I've chosen is very limited.
Your experience is much appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
[835 byte] By [
ntalamaia] at [2007-11-27 8:19:32]
# 1
dom4j is similar to JDOM.
http://www.dom4j.org/faq.html#whats-dom4j-v-jdom
http://www.jdom.org/pipermail/jdom-interest/2001-August/007085.html
http://www.sosnoski.com/opensrc/xmlbench/models.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2003/04/the_future_of_jdom_for_process.html
# 3
We have implemented JDOM in WebSphere Environment. It was 100 % Successful implementation. JDOM is tricky and required to spend more time to learn.
SAX is very user-friendly and encapsulates complex logic in it. Development effort will be minimal with SAX parser. But, its just a child's play..
# 4
Thanks guys. It seems that there is no clear answer as to which one should I use.
I will start using dom4j because it has more convenience methods and it heavily uses JCF, which I am very comfortable with. Although it seems that the learning curve is steeper (more complicated API) it is probably worth the effort.
Thanks again for your responses.
