Question

First, how do I format the XML processing instruction, is it:

<?processingInstructionName attribute='value' attribute2='value2'?> 

Using StAX, I then want to read it by handling the XMLStreamConstants.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION (javadoc) event, but it only provides two methods to then retrieve information about the processing instruction from the XMLStreamReader:

getPITarget() getPIData() 

The javadoc for these two methods isn’t very helpful.

1. Is the XML formatting correct?
2. Is this the proper way to go about parsing processing instructions using the StAX XMLStreamReader APIs?
3. How do I use getPITarget() and getPIData() to return multiple arguments?

Answer 1

1.Is the XML formatting correct?

Yes, however do note that a processing instruction does not have attributes — only data. What looks like attributes are part of the data and some people call them "pseudo-attributes".

2.Is this the proper way to go about parsing processing instructions using the StAX XMLStreamReader APIs?

Yes.

3.How do I use getPITarget() and getPIData() to return multiple arguments?

If by "multiple arguments" you mean the possibly more than one pseudo-attributes contained in the data, the answer is that your code must parse the data (using some standard string methods as the C# split(), and retrieve the set of name-value pairs for all pseudo-attributes.