Parsing XML with just a few lines of Java?

Question

Consider the following XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<CATALOG>
    <CD>
        <TITLE>Empire Burlesque</TITLE>
        <ARTIST>Bob Dylan</ARTIST>
        <COUNTRY>USA</COUNTRY>
        <COMPANY>Columbia</COMPANY>
        <PRICE>10.90</PRICE>
        <YEAR>1985</YEAR>
    </CD>
    <CD>
        <TITLE>Hide your heart</TITLE>
        <ARTIST>Bonnie Tyler</ARTIST>
        <COUNTRY>UK</COUNTRY>
        <COMPANY>CBS Records</COMPANY>
        <PRICE>9.90</PRICE>
        <YEAR>1988</YEAR>
    </CD>
</CATALOG>

I would like to parse this XML and print the following to stdout:

Bob Dylan recorded Empire Burlesque in 1985.
Bonnie Tyler recorded Hide your heart in 1988.

Whats the easiest way to do this in Java?

I'm frustrated because I can parse this XML in 5 or 6 lines in some languages, but in Java the only method I know of is to write my own SAX parser, meaning I'll need around 50 lines of code; 10 times what I might use elsewhere! Does Java have a super simple XML parser suitable for easy tasks like this?

(I know there are similar questions, but they either don't contain an example, or the example involves long, partial, and/or deeply nested XML. This question has a simple example, and hopefully will receive some good answers with working code to distinguish it.)

possible duplicate of [Best XML parser for Java](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/373833/best-xml-parser-for-java) — assylias, May 22 '12 at 18:10
What about not using Java? You won't be able to parse this file in java in 5 lines of code. — Maurício Linhares, May 22 '12 at 18:10
Have you looked at the bundled api's or other libs to parse XML? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_API_for_XML_Processing or http://www.mkyong.com/tutorials/java-xml-tutorials/ — scrappedcola, May 22 '12 at 18:12
This is a good question, why close it? Having an easy way of parsing XML with one line of code in Java is problematic and should be discussed. — Faustas, Nov 08 '13 at 17:34

Nathan Hughes · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-22T19:32:57.330

2

Try XOM.

    import nu.xom.*;

    List<Element> cds = new Builder().build(inputFile).getRootElement().query("CD");
    for (Element e : cds) {
        System.out.println(e.getFirstChildElement("ARTIST").getValue() 
            + " recorded " 
            + e.getFirstChildElement("TITLE").getValue() 
            + " in " 
            + e.getFirstChildElement("YEAR").getValue());
    }

edited May 22 '12 at 19:32

answered May 22 '12 at 18:17

Nathan Hughes

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+1 for the simple code. Is XOM a 3rd party library? – Buttons840 May 22 '12 at 19:03
@Buttons840: yes, it's an offshoot of JDOM. – Nathan Hughes May 22 '12 at 19:12

Parsing XML with just a few lines of Java?

1 Answers1