XML Parsing and creating objects..

Question

I need to create objects with the value present in the XML file under a specific tag.
E.g.:
XML file:
<employees.
<employee>
<name>
<first>Chandan</first>
<last>Sharma</last>
</name>
<empid>1212</empid>
<dept>Telecom</dept>
</employee>
<employee>
<name>
<fitst>First</first>
<last>Last</last>
</name>
<empid>100</empid>
<dept>Dept</dept>
</employee>
</employees>
There may be tags other than <employees> in the XML file.
I need to parse this file and create objects of class
Employees{
String firstName,lastName,empid,dept;
Please help me.
As I am new with this, it would be better if you provide me some with code.
Thanks & Regards,
Chandan Sharma

Answer 1

You can od it using SAX of course but the implementation is completely different. As I haven't used any SAX approach for many years, I can't provide you any example but you should find many of them either with google or by downloading any java implementation (like Xerces, Xalan...)
The better solution depends on your needs. That's the standard answer, I know :)
when you use DOM, you load the entire content of the file in the memory. and then you travel through the JAVA structure that has been created by using the methods I gave you.
When you use SAX, you define a listener for your parser that will be called any time the parser finds something interesting. a new node, a new attribute, a new node content... sometimes it's a pain to implement.
In my opinion if your application will only handle one message at a time, you should keep the DOM approach because I don't think there will be any big difference in time processing. On the other hand if your application will potentially manage multiple messages at the same time, then your computer memory can be overloaded by a DOM approach and the you will face bad performances, in such case use the SAX approach.
as a conclusion, the best way to make a decision is to run benchmarks. good luck :)
Marc