parsing a non xml file in java

Question

I want to parse a document that is not pure xml. For example

my name is <j> <b> mike</b>  </j>

example 2

 my name is  <mytag1 attribute="val" >mike</mytag1> and yours is <mytag2> john</mytag2>

Means my input is not pure xml. ITs simliar to html but the tags are not html. How can i parse it in java?

Answer 1

Your examples are valid XML, except for the lack of a document element. If you know this to always be the case, then you could just wrap a set of dummy tags around the whole thing and use a standard parser (SAX, DOM...)

On the other hand if you get something uglier (e.g. tags don't match up, or are spaced out in an overlapping fashion), you'll have to do something custom which will involve a number of rules that you have to decide on that will be unique to your application. (e.g. How do I handle an opening tag that has no close? What do I do if the closing tag is outside the parent?)

Answer 2

There are few parsers that take not well formed html and turn it into well formed xml, here is some comparison with examples, that includes the most popular ones, except maybe HTMLParser. Probably that's what you need.