How to read an XML file with Java?

Question

I don\'t need to read complex XML files. I just want to read the following configuration file with a simplest XML reader

    loc         


        

Answer 1

If you just need a simple solution that's included with the Java SDK (since 5.0), check out the XPath package. I'm sure others perform better, but this was all I needed. Here's an example:

import javax.xml.xpath.XPath;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathConstants;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathExpressionException;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;

...

try {
    XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
    InputSource inputSource = new InputSource("strings.xml");

    // result will equal "Save My Changes" (see XML below)
    String result = xpath.evaluate("//string", inputSource);
}
catch(XPathExpressionException e) {
    // do something
}

strings.xml

    Save My Changes