How to read XML response from a URL in java?

Question

I need to write a simple function that takes a URL and processes the response which is XML or JSON, I have checked the Sun website https://swingx-ws.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList , but the HttpRequest object is to be found nowhere, is it possible to do this in Java? I`m writting a rich client end app.

Answer 1

For xml parsing of an inputstream you can do:

// the SAX way: XMLReader myReader = XMLReaderFactory.createXMLReader(); myReader.setContentHandler(handler); myReader.parse(new InputSource(new URL(url).openStream()));  // or if you prefer DOM: DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder(); Document doc = db.parse(new URL(url).openStream()); 

But to communicate over http from server to client I prefer using hessian library or springs http invoker lib

Answer 2

If you want to print XML directly onto the screen you can use TransformerFactory

URL url = new URL(urlString); URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();  DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder(); Document doc = builder.parse(conn.getInputStream());  TransformerFactory transformerFactory= TransformerFactory.newInstance(); Transformer xform = transformerFactory.newTransformer();  // that’s the default xform; use a stylesheet to get a real one xform.transform(new DOMSource(doc), new StreamResult(System.out));