Creating and Modifying XML Documents - Beginning Java 2 SDK - page 1045

You could parse() a document using the DocumentBuilder object, builder , like this:

File xmlFile = new File("D:/Beg Java Stuff/Address.xml");
Document xmlDoc = null;
try {
xmlDoc = builder.parse(xmlFile);
}
catch(SAXException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
System.exit(1);
}
catch(IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
System.exit(1);
}

This code fragement requires imports for the File and IOException classes in the java.io package
as well as the org.w3c.dom.Document class name. We can now call methods for the xmlDoc object
to navigate through the elements in the document tree structure. Let's look at what the possibilities are.

Navigating a Document Object Tree

The Node interface that is defined in the org.w3c.dom package is fundamental to all objects that
encapsulate components of an XML document, and this includes the Document object itself. The
subinterfaces of Node that identify components of a document are:

Element Represents an XML element.

Attr Represents an attribute for an element.

Text Represents text that is part of element content. This interface is

a subinterface of CharacterData , which in turn is a
subinterface of Node . References of type Text will therefore
have methods from all three interfaces.

CDATASection Represents a CDATA section - unparsed character data.

Comment

Represents a document comment. This interface also extends
the CharacterData interface.

DocumentType Represents the contents of a DOCTYPE declaration.

Entity Represents an entity that may be parsed or unparsed.

EntityReference Represents a reference to an entity.

Notation Represents a notation declared in the DTD for a document. A

notation is a definition of an unparsed entity type.

ProcessingInstruction Represents a processing instruction for an application.