Parsing XML wit DOM parser

Android offers three types of XML parsers:

1. DOM Parser.
2. Pull Parser.
3. SAX Parser.

well demonstrate each using the following xml example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<person>
 <firstname>Jack</firstname>
 <lastname>smith</lastname>
 <age>28</age>
</person>

which we need to parse to create an object from Person class:

public class Person{
 public String firstName;
 public String lastName;
 public int age;
 }

Parsing the response with DOM Parser:

Android provides org.w3c.dom library that contains classes used to parse xml by constructing a document and
matching each node to parse the info.
to parse our example response with DOM parser, we implement a function like this

void parseByDOM(String response) throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException{
 Person person=new Person();
 DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
 DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
 Document doc = db.parse(new InputSource(new StringReader(response)));
 // normalize the document
 doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
 // get the root node
 NodeList nodeList = doc.getElementsByTagName("person");
 Node node=nodeList.item(0);
 // the node has three child nodes
 for (int i = 0; i < node.getChildNodes().getLength(); i++) {
 Node temp=node.getChildNodes().item(i);
 if(temp.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("firstname")){
 person.firstName=temp.getTextContent();
 }
 else if(temp.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("lastname")){
 person.lastName=temp.getTextContent();
 }
 else if(temp.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("age")){
 person.age=Integer.parseInt(temp.getTextContent());
 }

 }

 Log.e("person", person.firstName+ " "+person.lastName+" "+String.valueOf(person.age));
 }

The previous method is good, it retrieves the info correctly, but it requires that you are familiar with the xml structure so that you know the order of each xml node.

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Parsing JSON respone

if we have a JSON web service response like this:

"persons"
[
{
"person"{
"firstName": "John",
 "lastName": "Smith",
 "age": 25
}
}
{
"person"{
"firstName": "Catherine",
 "lastName": "Jones",
 "age": 35
}
}
]

this response is a JSON Array with the name "persons", this array consists of "person" JSON Objects.
to parse such a reponse:

public ArrayList<Person> getMessage(String response){
 JSONObject jsonResponse;
 ArrayList<Person> arrPersons=new ArrayList<Person>;
 try {
 // obtain the reponse
 jsonResponse = new JSONObject(response);
 // get the array
 JSONArray persons=jsonResponse.optJSONArray("persons");
 // iterate over the array and retrieve single person instances
 for(int i=0;i<persons.length();i++){
 // get person object
 JSONObject person=persons.getJSONObject(i);
 // get first name
 String firstname=person.optString("firstname");
 // get last name
 String lastname=person.optString("lastname");
 // get the age
 int age=person.optInt("age");

 // construct the object and add it to the arraylist
 Person p=new Person();
 p.firstName=firstname;
 p.lastName=lastname;
 p.age=age;
 arrPersons.add(p);
 }

 } catch (JSONException e) {

 e.printStackTrace();
 }

 return arrPersons;
 }

notice that we used the methods optJSONArray,optString,optInt instead of using getString,getInt because the opt methods return empty strings or zero integers if no elements are found. while the get methods throw an exception if the element is not found.

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Parsing XML wit SAX parser

Android provides org.xml.sax package that has that provides the event-driven SAX parser.
to parse the previous response with SAX parser, we have to create a class extending DefaultHandler and override the following methods:

1. startDocument(): invoked when the xml document is open, there we can initialize any member variables.
2. startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes attributes): invoked when the parser encounters a xml node, here we can initialize specific instances of our person object.
3. endElement(String uri, String localName, String Name): invoked when the parser reaches the closing of a xml tag. here the element value would have been completely read.
4. characters(char[] ch, int start, int length): this method is called when the parser reads characters of a node value.

we want to parse this xml response:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<person>
 <firstname>Jack</firstname>
 <lastname>smith</lastname>
 <age>28</age>
</person>

so our parsing class will be like this:

/**
 * SAX parser to parse persons response
 */
 public class PersonParser extends DefaultHandler
 {

 // arraylist to store person objects
 ArrayList persons;
 // temporary person object
 Person tempPerson;
 // string builder acts as a buffer
 StringBuilder builder;

 /**
 * Initialize the arraylist
 * @throws SAXException
 */
 @Override
 public void startDocument() throws SAXException {
 pesons=new ArrayList();

 }

 /**
 * Initialize the temp person object which will hold the parsed in//fo
 * and the string builder that will store the read characters
 * @param uri
 * @param localName
 * @param qName
 * @param attributes
 * @throws SAXException
 */
 @Override
 public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName,
 Attributes attributes) throws SAXException {

 if(localName.equalsIgnoreCase.equals("person")){
 tempPerson=new Person();
 builder=new StringBuilder();
 }

 }
 /**
 * Finished reading the person tag, add it to arraylist
 * @param uri
 * @param localName
 * @param qName
 * @throws SAXException
 */
 @Override
 public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName)
 throws SAXException {
 // finished reading a person, add it to the arraylist
 if(localName.toLowerCase().equals("person"))
 {
 this.persons.add(tempPerson);
 }
 // finished reading "firstname" tag assign it to the temp person
 else if(localName.toLowerCase().equals("firstname")){
 tempPerson.firstName=builder.toString();
 }
 // finished reading "lastname" tag assign it to the temp person
 else if(localName.toLowerCase().equals("lastname")){
 tempPerson.lastName=builder.toString();
 }
 // finished reading "age" tag assign it to the temp person
 else if(localName.toLowerCase().equals("age")){
 tempPerson.age=Integer.parseInt(builder.toString());
 }
 }

 /**
 * Read the value of each tag
 * @param ch
 * @param start
 * @param length
 * @throws SAXException
 */
 @Override
 public void characters(char[] ch, int start, int length)
 throws SAXException {
 // read the characters and append them to the buffer
 String tempString=new String(ch, start, length);
 builder.append(tempString);
 }
 }

the code is pretty easy, the parser iterates over each node, you check the current node name and take an action.

then we call the parser like this:

public ArrayList getPersons(final String response) throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException
 {
 BufferedReader br=new BufferedReader(new StringReader(response));
 InputSource is=new InputSource(br);
 PersonParser parser=new PersonParser();
 SAXParserFactory factory=SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
 SAXParser sp=factory.newSAXParser();
 XMLReader reader=sp.getXMLReader();
 reader.setContentHandler(parser);
 reader.parse(is);
 ArrayList persons=parser.persons;

 return persons;

 }

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