This section provides a quick introduction of Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) that included in JDK 1.6.
What is JAXP?
JAXP stands for Java API for XML Processing.
JAXP enables Java applications to parse, transform, validate and query XML documents using an API
that is independent of a particular XML processor implementation.
JAXP provides a pluggability layer to enable vendors to provide their own implementations
without introducing dependencies in application code.
Using this software, application and tool developers can build fully-functional XML-enabled
Java applications for e-commerce, application integration, and web publishing.
The current version of JAXP is 1.4. JAXP 1.4 is included in JDK 1.6 (Java Platform, Standard Edition version 6.0).
You don't need to download anything separately now, if you are using JDK 1.6. The following tutorial section shows you how to
download and install JDK 1.6.
JAXP 1.4 contains 3 groups of class packages:
1. Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) - The core interface packages.
Constants - Defines core XML constants and functionality from the XML specifications.
Datatype - XML/Java Type Mappings.
Namespace - XML Namespace processing.
Parsers - Provides classes allowing the processing of XML documents.
Transform - Defines the generic APIs for processing transformation instructions, and performing a transformation from source to result.
Transform DOM - This package implements DOM-specific transformation APIs.
Transform SAX - This package implements SAX2-specific transformation APIs.
Transform Stream - This package implements stream- and URI- specific transformation APIs.
Validation - Provides an API for validation of XML documents
XPath - Provides an object-model neutral API for the evaluation of XPath expressions and access to the evaluation environment.
2. Document Object Model (DOM) - DOM specific packages.
Core - DOM core interfaces.
Load and Save - Input and output related interfaces.
Events - Event handling interfaces.
HTML - HTML related interfaces.
Traversal - Traversal interfaces.
XPath - XPath related interfaces.
3. Simple API for XML (SAX) - SAX specific packages.
Core - SAX core interfaces.
Helper Classes - Contains "helper" classes, including support for bootstrapping SAX-based applications.
Extensions - Contains interfaces to SAX2 facilities that conformant SAX drivers won't necessarily support.
The default implementation classes of JAXP 1.4 are from the Apache Xerces project.
For more information on JAXP, see https://jaxp.dev.java.net/.