XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Chapter 26. SAX Reference

SAX, the Simple API for XML, is an event-based API used to parse XML documents. David Megginson, SAX’s original author, placed SAX in the public domain. SAX is bundled with all parsers that implement the API, including Xerces, MSXML, Crimson, the Oracle XML Parser for Java, and Ælfred. However, you can also get it and the full source code from http://sax.sourceforge.net/.

SAX was originally defined as a Java API and is intended primarily for parsers written in Java, so this chapter will focus on its Java implementation. However, its port to other object-oriented languages, such as C++, C#, Python, Perl, and Eiffel, is common and usually quite similar.

Tip

This chapter covers SAX2 exclusively. In 2004, all major parsers that support SAX support SAX2. The major change from SAX1 to SAX2 was the addition of namespace support. This addition necessitated changing the names and signatures of almost every method and class in SAX. The old SAX1 methods and classes are still available, but they’re now deprecated and shouldn’t be used.SAX 2.0.2 is a minor update to SAX2 that add a few extra optional classes, features, and properties without really affecting the core API. They were carefully designed to be backward compatible with SAX 2.0 and 2.0.1. Some, but not all, current parsers support SAX 2.0.2. When something in this chapter is only available in SAX 2.0.2, it will be clearly noted.