Comparison of XML parsing APIs on the Java SE platform

Question

Hello,

I am currently developing an RSS feed reader, and I am wondering which XML parsing API would be the best fit for that. (Please note that I am not looking for a Feed parser library - it is merely the starting point for that research about XML APIs)

I am looking for a rundown of the various XML parsing APIs on the Java platform, focusing on the following criteria:

• Ease of configuration
  • Is the configuration in a separate file?
  • Are there reasonable defaults?
• Ease of use
  • Node navigation - to siblings, to children, to the parent.
  • Access/Manipulation of Namespaces, Attributes, Text.
  • Is the class hierarchy well-thought or natural?
• Invalid XML - what happens (when does it fail?), and what can I do when:
  • an invalid character is encountered (forbidden in either the encoding or the XML spec)
  • the tree structure is not valid (for example, because of unescaped HTML tags)

Here is some information that I would consider useful though not crucial:

• Performance comparisons
• A list of available implementations

I am currently considering any XML API on the JVM.

• It can be a Java standard (DOM, SAX, StAX, JAXP), or an implementation-specific API.
• It can be an API for any language on the JVM (Scala, Groovy, Jython, JRuby...) - just make sure that it adds something compared to the standard Java APIs.

I believe that a good way to structure this thread would be to only have one API per answer.

Answer 1

jaxp is not an implementation but a wrapper/facade api where u can plugin multiple parser implementations. so you are left with sax, dom and stax. now below are two good comparisions and you do the math:

http://techstop.abidshafiq.com/2010/02/java-xml-api-comparison/ http://java.sun.com/performance/reference/whitepapers/StAX-1_0.pdf

Answer 2

Look here, you'll get a handful! http://www.xml.com/pub/rg/Java_Parsers

But, I had seen some of my friends using this one in their projects. Though JAXP is widely used, this one looks promising.

Apache Xerces parser version 1.2.3 (http://xerces.apache.org/xerces-j/)