What is the simplest and minimalistic java xml api?

Question

There are many pretty good json libs lika GSon. But for XML I know only Xerces/JDOM and both have tedious API. I don\'t like to use unnecessary objects like DocumentFactory,

Answer 1

Dom4J rocks. It's very easy and understandable

Sample Code:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    final String xml = ""
                     + "";

    Document document = DocumentHelper.parseText(xml);

    // simple collection views
    for (Element element : (List) document
            .getRootElement()
            .element("foo")
            .element("bar")
            .elements("baz")) {
        System.out.println(element.attributeValue("name"));
    }

    // and easy xpath support
    List elements2 = (List)
        document.createXPath("//baz").evaluate(document);
    for (final Element element : elements2) {
        System.out.println(element.attributeValue("name"));
    }
}

Output:

phleem
gumbo
phleem
gumbo