Practical XML for Java Programs

to this:

<project id="My First Project"> 
 <module id="Hammers"> 
  <file id="ArmandHammer.java"/> 
  <file id="Hammer.java"/> 
  <file id="SledgeHammer.java"/> 
 </module> 
 <module id="Nails"> 
  <file id="RoofNail.java" type="source"/> 
  <file id="DeckNail.class" type="binary"/> 
 </module> 
</project> 

But, while anyone can read an ASCII file and even write a "Hello, World!", there is a learning curve between you and your first:

<?xml version="1.0"> ? <hello>Hello, World!</hello>

You will have to learn the meaning of entities, elements, attributes—probably the whole DOM (Document Object Model) concept. With ASCII, nobody remembers—or even cares—what the code for '&' is. It's not important; the ability to easily store data into a file and retrieve it is. The same should be true for XML.

When dealing with XML, you need a convenient representation of the XML data in memory. Such a representation will make finding nodes and their attributes by their "type" and "id" values and scanning or filtering the whole tree easy. This article offers Java programmers a solution to achieve this goal: an easy-to-use package for handling XML data in Java. First, it gives some practical advice on what is and isn't important in this data.