Java DOM Parser - Overview

The Document Object Model (DOM) is an official recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It defines an interface that enables programs to access and update the style, structure, and contents of XML documents. XML parsers that support DOM implement this interface.

When to Use?

You should use a DOM parser when −

You need to know a lot about the structure of a document.

You need to move parts of an XML document around (you might want to sort certain elements, for example).

You need to use the information in an XML document more than once.

What You Get?

When you parse an XML document with a DOM parser, you get back a tree structure that contains all of the elements of your document. The DOM provides a variety of functions you can use to examine the contents and structure of the document.

Advantages

The DOM is a common interface for manipulating document structures. One of its design goals is that Java code written for one DOM-comppant parser should run on any other DOM-comppant parser without having to do any modifications.

DOM interfaces

The DOM defines several Java interfaces. Here are the most common interfaces −

Node − The base datatype of the DOM.

Element − The vast majority of the objects you ll deal with are Elements.

Attr − Represents an attribute of an element.

Text − The actual content of an Element or Attr.

Document − Represents the entire XML document. A Document object is often referred to as a DOM tree.

Common DOM methods

When you are working with DOM, there are several methods you ll use often −

Document.getDocumentElement() − Returns the root element of the document.

Node.getFirstChild() − Returns the first child of a given Node.

Node.getLastChild() − Returns the last child of a given Node.

Node.getNextSibpng() − These methods return the next sibpng of a given Node.

Node.getPreviousSibpng() − These methods return the previous sibpng of a given Node.