Using XML with Legacy Business Applications

A Recursive Algorithm

Now let's talk about a more radical alternative approach to designing this utility. We have outlined in this program the basic strategy for walking through the tree that represents a DOM Document. For each selected Node we get a list of the Node's children. Then for each of the children we get a list of children and process them however we want. Keeping with my “clarity over cleverness” orientation, I've designed specialized routines that deal specifically with the expected structure of the input XML document. However, it isn't too hard to see how this approach can be generalized into a recursive algorithm that walks the complete tree and takes actions that are appropriate to each type or name of Node encountered. Listed ...