What SASAX is

Document structure representation

In use of SASAX, (expected) structure of document to parse is represented as structure of Java object, and examined by them.

For example, you can parse(and examine) XML document "<int>123456</int>" by "element" shown in 'parsing "int" element'.

// code to parse XML document shown below.
// <int>
//   123456
// </int>

IntElement element =
    new IntElement(null, "", "int");

And example for more complex XML document is shown in 'parsing "composite" element'.

// code to parse XML document shown below.
// <composite>
//   <int>123456</int>
//   <string>string value</string>
// </composite>

CompositeElement element =
    new CompositeElement(null, "", "composite");

IntElement intValue =
    new IntElement(element, "", "int");
element.addMustItem(intValue);

StringElement stringValue =
    new StringElement(element, "", "string");
element.addMustItem(stringValue);

You may notice that first argument for constructor is "parent" element (by the way,Second one is namespace URI, and third one is local name of element).

In the former example, the element named as "int" is root element of XML document and has no higher one, so the object refered by "element" variable is constructed with "null" as parent. In the later example, the element named as "composite" is constructed "null" parent because of same reason, but elements named as "int" or "string" are constructed with it as parent.