KXML: A Great Find for XML Parsing in J2ME  : Page 2

Pull Parsing
Anyway, enough theory. Suffice it to say that kXML is easy to use. So let's look at a quick example that shows how kXML works as a pull parser. The demo is called kXMLDemo_pull. It will use a pull parser to go through a file that contains address book information. Shown below are some of the more important lines in the source code and a description of what they do.

1.XmlParser parser = null;
2.
3.parser = new XmlParser( new InputStreamReader(
1this.getClass().getResourceAsStream(resfile_name) ));  

Line 3 creates an XmlParser passing it the InputStream from a resource read in as a stream. This parser is called repeatedly until an END_DOCUMENT event is issued.

1.while ( (event = parser.read()).getType() != Xml.END_DOCUMENT ) {
2. ...
3.if (name != null && name.equals("address")) {
4. ...
5.	parseAddressTag( parser );

Line 3 determines if the event is the start of an <address> tag, and line 5 passes the parser to the "parseAddressTag," which takes control of the parser.

1.while ((event = parser.peek()).getType() != Xml.END_DOCUMENT) {
2....
3.	if (type == Xml.END_TAG && name.equals("address")) {
4.		return;
5.	}
6....	
7.	ParseEvent next = parser.read();
8.			
9.	// if it's not a text event then skip it
10.	if (next.getType() != Xml.TEXT) {
11.		continue;
12.	}
13....
14.          System.err.println(name + ": " + text);

The code immediately above is inside the "parseAddressTag." It will loop until it finds the END_TAG for <address>. If it encounters any other tag, then its name and the contents inside it are printed out to the console. So if the tag <name>Robert Cadena</name> is found, you'll see the following console output:

name: Robert Cadena

Once the end of <address> is found (lines 8-10) control is returned to the calling function, which then begins checking for <address> again.

As you can see, using the pull parser is easy, and it's a great benefit to be able to pass the parser to another function and begin looking for elements inside the document. And you aren't restricted to parsing resource files; you can also use HttpConnection and pass this function the http InputStream. This saves you from having to read the InputStream, save the content, and then parse it; kXML handles all that for you.

Previous Page

Next Page

---

• Download The Code for this Article

---