build XML out of user's input

Question

Hi guys,

I wanted to see some of your ideas/opinions/suggestions on the following problem. The idea is to have a simple webapp (java webapp) collecting user's input that essentially is turned into an XML file? The final XML file has to be valid and has to conform to a DTD.

What would be a good way to dynamically collect an input presenting users with all the possible choices at a given step? For example, if we are at the point of a |start| tag and now a user can create tag |head| or |body| or |bla| what's a good way of presenting and validating this info?

I look forward to seeing some of your interesting ideas. Thanks.

Answer 1

If you create an object model that represents what is available, and an editor that is tied to that model, you can rather easily serialize that into XML.

Searching for "Java XML Serialization" yields some good relevant results, such as this.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

That's what JAXB supports.

You define a schema and use JAXB to create Java classes that implement that schema. You can then marshall and unmarshall data from Java objects into/from XML documents.