Understanding and XML file in Java

Question

I am working on a project where I need to read in an XML file and use the information in the file to analyze user input. More specifically the file looks like this.

<course>
<category  name="Course Name">
    <category name="Exams">
        <item name="Midterm" outof="110.0" weight="17.0"></item>
        <item name="Final Exam" outof="110.0" weight="18.0"></item>
    </category>

    <category name="Individual Assignments">
            <item name="Swing GUI Conference Program" outof="50.0" weight="7.5">     </item>
            <item name="Assignment 2" outof="50.0" weight="7.5">     </item>
            <item name="Assignment 3" outof="50.0" weight="7.5">     </item>
            <item name="Assignment 4" outof="50.0" weight="7.5">     </item>

    </category>

    <category name="Group Projects">
        <item name="Lab Selector Project" outof="75.0" weight="15"></item>
        <item name="Android Project" outof="75.0" weight="15"></item>
    </category>

    <category name="Homework, Quizzes, Participation">
        <item name="01 - GUI Using Dialog Boxes" outof="20.0" weight="2.5"></item>
        <item name="02 - GUID Using Menu Files" outof="20.0" weight="2.5"></item>
    </category> 

</category>

What I need to be able to do is pull this information so that I can use it in a grade calcualtor application.

Edit: Several of you have mentions SAX/DOM editor and I've searched and tried both of those methods but when I try to implement them it comes back will blank strings. I think it has to do with all the examples I find looking like this:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<school>
 <student id="1">
  <firstname>ankush</firstname>
  <lastname>thakur</lastname>
  <email>beingjavaguy.gmail.com</email>
  <phone>7678767656</phone>
 </student>
 <student id="2">
  <firstname>aarti</firstname>
  <lastname>gupta</lastname>
  <email>aartigupta.gmail.com</email>
  <phone>9876546545</phone>
 </student>
</school>

Whereas my xml file has all the information stored in the opening tag and not stored in between the open and close tags.

see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/373833/best-xml-parser-for-java — Sumit Singh, Nov 11 '13 at 05:59
[Parse the XML](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jaxp/). If you need to be able to re-iterate over the contents, parse it into a DOM and use XPath, otherwise you can use a SAX style parser... — MadProgrammer, Nov 11 '13 at 06:48

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 11 '13 at 10:57

1

If you have XSD for this XML (or can write), you can use JAXB for avoid writing parsing code , and get XML data as Java POJO with "unmarshal".

answered Nov 11 '13 at 10:57

pasha701

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+1 - a With JAXB you can also start from POJOs using annotations to control the mapping to XML. – bdoughan Nov 11 '13 at 12:24

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 11 '13 at 06:00

0

You can use a XML parser like sax or DOM to parse the xml to your java program and then can work on the implementation the calc.

how to use sax and DOM

answered Nov 11 '13 at 06:00

Sanjaya Liyanage

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 11 '13 at 06:01

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I would recommend checking out the SAX parser. http://www.mkyong.com/java/how-to-read-xml-file-in-java-sax-parser/. If you have a more specific question I'm sure we could help you better

answered Nov 11 '13 at 06:01

mattdee123

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 11 '13 at 07:08

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Parsing the XML with parsers like SAX or DOM or StAX are helpful to fetch the information you want. See this link for basic example : Parsing xml using DOM, SAX and StAX

answered Nov 11 '13 at 07:08

OneSix

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Understanding and XML file in Java

4 Answers4