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SAX Parser
 
  UC ingot The DOM parser builds a tree representing the XML file and stores it in memory.  SAX is a different model - it does not store the XML in a tree, but rather generate events as it comes upon XML tags and text.
  • To use SAX, you need to create a class that implements ContentHandler and provides implementation for its methods.
    • Or, extend DefaultHanlder, which implements four interfaces and provides do-nothing handlers for them. Then you only provide implementation for the events you wish to handle.
    • For example, if you want to take some action when the drivername element is reached, you'll want to override the startElement method to search for this tag.
  • SAX is great for large XML files.  It's also nice if you just want to get one piece of information out of an XML file without reading the entire file into memory.
    • But DOM is fine for smaller scale applications.  So, while it's good to know that SAX exists, and how it works, we'll stick with DOM for our applications.