XML Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Notes
Dr. Herong Yang, Version 4.00

What Is SAX (Simple API for XML)?

This section provides a quick introduction of SAX (Simple API for XML) - an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows applications to process XML files by handling events fired by the parser while it traverses the XML structure.

What Is SAX (Simple API for XML)? SAX is an event-driven Application Programming Interface (API) that allows applications to process XML files by handling events fired by the parser while it traverses the XML structure.

If an application wants to use SAX to process XML files, it must provide SAX event handlers, call back methods, to perform whatever the application want to do. If no event handler is provided, nothing will be performed on the XML files.

SAX was originally developed for Java language by David Megginson in 1998. Now SAX has been implemented in all major languages:

  • SAX Project - The original SAX Java project is an open source project located at: http://www.saxproject.org/.
  • SAX has been implemented in Java in J2SDK 1.4.1, which is already installed on my system. So I am ready to play with XML files through SAX in Java.
  • SAX has been implemented in PHP. Sax4PHP is a PHP5 class to manage XML with a Java like SAX API. See http://sax4php.sourceforge.net/ for more information.
  • SAX has been implemented in Perl. Perl SAX is a SAX Perl implementation developed as an open source product. See http://perl-xml.sourceforge.net/perl-sax/ for more information.

The Apache Xerces is an Apache project that produces implementations of SAX for 3 programming languages. See http://xerces.apache.org/ for more information.

  • Apache Xerces C++ - A processor for parsing, validating, serializing and manipulating XML, written in C++.
  • Apache Xerces2 Java - A processor for parsing, validating, serializing and manipulating XML, written in Java.
  • Apache Xerces Perl - A processor for parsing, validating, serializing and manipulating XML, written in Perl.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Introduction of XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

 XML File Syntax

 XML File Browsers

 DOM (Document Object Model) Programming Interface

SAX (Simple API for XML) Programming Interface

What Is SAX (Simple API for XML)?

 Using SAX Implementation Provided in JDK 1.4

 SAX Content Handler Interface

 SAXBrowser.java - SAX Interface Java Example

 SAX Parsing Pattern Example

 DTD (Document Type Definition) Introduction

 Syntaxes of DTD Statements

 Validating an XML Document against the Specified DTD Document Type

 XSD (XML Schema Definition) Introduction

 Syntaxes of XSD Statements

 Validating an XML Document against the Specified XML Schema

 XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) Introduction

 XSLT (XSL Transformations) Introduction

 Java Implementation of XSLT

 XPath (XML Path) Language

 XSLT Elements as Programming Statements

 Control and Generate XML Element in the Result

 References

 Printable Copy - PDF Version

Dr. Herong Yang, updated in 2009
What Is SAX (Simple API for XML)?