Question

I’m having a problem with parsing XML in Android app, a question here implies that there are 4 types of XML parsing mechanism advised:
– SAX
– DOM
– XmlPullParser
– Simple XML Framework

While Simple Framework is amazing and I was already working with it I hit a dead end when I found out it can’t support @Text and @Element in the same class, which sucks because I can’t change my XML Scheme.

So ideas are appreciated and any advises will be great.

Answer 1

Well after researching for a long time I found the best XML parser suited to my needs was the JAXB Parser.

• Supports complex types.
• Annotation Oriented.
• Works well with Android.
• Very easy to understand.
• Tools to generate JAXB annotated classes already exists in Java 1.6+

An Example to show how easy it is to use:

@XmlRootElement(name = "a")
 public class A {

@XmlElementRefs({
    @XmlElementRef(name = "lang", namespace = "http://www.w3.org/namespace/", type = Lang.class, required = false),
    @XmlElementRef(name = "subst", namespace = "http://www.w3.org/namespace/", type = Subst.class, required = false),
    @XmlElementRef(name = "include", namespace = "http://www.w3.org/namespace/", type = Include.class, required = false),
    @XmlElementRef(name = "br", namespace = "http://www.w3.org/namespace/", type = Br.class, required = false),
    @XmlElementRef(name = "kw", namespace = "http://www.w3.org/namespace/", type = Kw.class, required = false),
    @XmlElementRef(name = "help", namespace = "http://www.w3.org/namespace/", type = Help.class, required = false)
})
@XmlMixed
protected List<Object> content;
@XmlAttribute(name = "cost")
protected String cost;
@XmlAttribute(name = "href", required = true)
protected String href;
@XmlAttribute(name = "key")
protected String key;

So that was the best I came up with.

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Any additions are welcome 🙂