Question

Currently our Java application uses the values held within a tab delimited *.cfg file. We need to change this application so that it now uses an XML file.

What is the best/simplest library to use in order to read in values from this file?

Answer 1

There are of course a lot of good solutions based on what you need. If it is just configuration, you should have a look at Jakarta commons-configuration and commons-digester.

You could always use the standard JDK method of getting a document :

import java.io.File; import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder; import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory; import org.w3c.dom.Document;  [...]  File file = new File('some/path'); DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder(); Document document = db.parse(file);