Question

We use SAX to parse XML because it does not require the entire XML document to be read into memory in order to parse a single value. I read many articles that insisted SAX can only be used to parse/decode XML and not create it. Is this true?

Answer 1

No, it isn’t true, you can encode XML to any Writer in Java using something similar to:

char[] ch; AttributesImpl atts = new AttributesImpl(); Writer writer = new StringWriter(); StreamResult streamResult = new StreamResult(writer); SAXTransformerFactory tf = (SAXTransformerFactory) TransformerFactory.newInstance();  // SAX2.0 ContentHandler TransformerHandler transformerHandler = tf.newTransformerHandler();  Transformer serializer = transformerHandler.getTransformer();  serializer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, 'UTF-8'); // serializer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.DOCTYPE_SYSTEM, 'nodes.dtd'); serializer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, 'yes');  transformerHandler.setResult(streamResult);  transformerHandler.startDocument();  atts.clear(); // atts.addAttribute('', '', 'xmlns', 'CDATA', 'http://www.example.com/nodes'); // atts.addAttribute('', '', 'xmlns:xsi', 'CDATA', 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'); // atts.addAttribute('', '', 'xsi:schemaLocation', 'CDATA', '/nodes.xsd'); transformerHandler.startElement('', '', 'node_list', atts);  // displayName element if (displayName != null) {     transformerHandler.startElement('', '', 'display_name', null);     ch = displayName.toCharArray();     transformerHandler.characters(ch, 0, ch.length);     transformerHandler.endElement('', '', 'display_name'); }  // nodes element transformerHandler.startElement('', '', 'nodes', null);  atts.clear(); atts.addAttribute('', '', 'node_type', 'CDATA', 'sometype'); transformerHandler.startElement('', '', 'node', atts);  ch = node.getValue().toCharArray(); transformerHandler.startElement('', '', 'value', null); transformerHandler.characters(ch, 0, ch.length); transformerHandler.endElement('', '', 'value');  transformerHandler.endElement('', '', 'node');  transformerHandler.endElement('', '', 'nodes');  transformerHandler.endElement('', '', 'node_list');  transformerHandler.endDocument();  String xml = writer.toString();