Java and XML, 3rd Edition

Chapter 4. Advanced SAX

What you’ve seen regarding SAX so far is essentially the simplest way to process and parse XML. And while SAX is indeed named the Simple API for XML, it offers programmers much more than basic parsing and content handling. There is an array of settings that affect parser behavior, as well as several additional handlers for edge-case scenarios; if you need to specify exactly how strings should be interned, or what behavior should occur when a DTD declares a notation, or even differentiate between CDATA sections and regular text sections, SAX provides. In fact, you can even modify and write out XML using SAX (along with a few additional packages); SAX is a full-featured API, and this chapter will give you the lowdown on features that go beyond simple parsing.

Properties and Features

I glossed over validation in the last chapter, and probably left you with a fair amount of questions. When I cover JAXP in Chapter 7, you’ll see that you can use either a method (setValidating()) or a set of classes (javax.xml.validation) to handle validation; you might expect to call a similar method—setValidation() or something similar—to initiate validation in SAX. But then, there’s also namespace awareness, dealt with quite a bit in Chapter 2 (and Chapter 3, with respect to Q names and local names—maybe setNamespaceAwareness()? But what about schema validation? And setting the location of a schema to validate on, if the document doesn’t specify one? There’s also low-level behavior, ...