JTree + complex documents (XML)

Question

Hi there,
I have the following problem:
I want to visualise complex documents, such as xml-documents by means of the JTree Class.
I wonder if there is any sense in implementing a class defining what exactly should be shown as a node and what should be shown as a leaf.
So what I want to do is inherit a class from JTree, passing an instance of a class as described above. Now the JTree would have to draw itself by means of the declaration in the class passed in a constructor.
Do you understand what I mean?
Is this senseful, what ways are there in Java implementing this?
Do you have other ideas?
Thank you,
sincerely
Karlheinz Toni

Answer 1

I have a program that allows me to edit XML documents (it came from Microsoft). And it does display the XML in its tree form, and allow me to edit nodes or leaves. So yes, it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
In answer to the rest of the question, you don't understand enough yet to ask that question. First of all you would not extend JTree, instead you would create your own tree model to support a generic JTree. If you look at the API documentation for JTree you will find a link to a tutorial about how to do that. Second, you can parse your XML document into a DOM, which is a tree-structured object that your tree model would work with. Here's a link to a whole lot of tutorials about XML: http://java.sun.com/webservices/docs/1.0/tutorial/index.html