# Java XML Parsing Made Easy

Source: https://www.yegor256.com/2014/04/24/java-xml-parsing-and-traversing.html

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Unlike with many other modern languages, parsing XML in Java requires  more than
one line of code. XML traversing using XPath takes even more code,  and I find
this is unfair and annoying.

I'm a big fan of XML and use it it in almost every Java application. Some time
ago, I decided to put all of that XML-to-DOM parsing code into a small library---[jcabi-xml]({% pst 2014/apr/2014-04-24-java-xml-parsing-and-traversing %}).

Put simply, the library is a convenient wrapper for JDK-native DOM
manipulations. That's why it is small and dependency-free. With the following
example, you can see just how simple XML parsing can be:

```java
import com.jcabi.xml.XML;
import com.jcabi.xml.XMLDocument;
XML xml = new XMLDocument(
  "<root><a>hello</a><b>world!</b></root>"
);
```


Now, we have an object of interface
[`XML`](https://xml.jcabi.com/apidocs-0.7.7/com/jcabi/xml/XML.html)
that can traverse the XML tree and convert it back to text.

For example:

```java
// outputs "hello"
System.out.println(xml.xpath("/root/a/text()").get(0));
// outputs the entire XML document
System.out.println(xml.toString());
```

Method `xpath()` allows you to find a collection of text nodes
or attributes in the document, and then convert them to
a collection of strings, using [XPath query](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPath):

```java
// outputs "hello" and "world"
for (String text : xml.xpath("/root/*/text()")) {
  System.out.println(text);
}
```

Method `nodes()` enables the same XPath search operation,
but instead returns a collection of instances of `XML` interface:

```java
// outputs "<a>hello</a>" and "<b>world</b>"
for (XML node : xml.nodes("/root/*"))
  System.out.println(node);
}
```

Besides XML parsing, printing and XPath traversing,
[jcabi-xml]({% pst 2014/apr/2014-04-24-java-xml-parsing-and-traversing %})
also provides XSD validation
and XSL transformations. I'll write about those features in the next post.

PS. Also, check this:
[XML/XPath Matchers for Hamcrest]({% pst 2014/apr/2014-04-28-xml-xpath-hamcrest-matchers %}).