“JDOM takes an intuitive approach to modeling an XML document
into a series of Java objects. These objects are then used like any
other Java object to manipulate and modify an XML document.”
“XML is an extensible framework for encapsulating data. Its
widespread usage has depended to a large degree on how various
programming languages could support reading, writing, and
manipulating XML. Standards like DOM and SAX were developed early
on and provide a language-independent API for XML manipulation. As
the technology matures, issues such as performance, ease of use,
and productivity become important. While many consider XML the
universal language for data, there is no such thing as a universal
programming language. Different languages have different
capabilities and are optimized for certain tasks. While DOM and SAX
continue to dominate the development world, new language-specific
APIs are emerging. One such API is JDOM, an open source project
whose goal is to make XML manipulation easier for Java programmers.
This article is an introduction to JDOM.”
“JDOM takes an intuitive approach to XML manipulation. All XML
building blocks (node types) are represented in JDOM as a class.
For example, an element, an attribute, or a processing instruction,
all have a corresponding class in JDOM. Using an underlying SAX or
DOM parser, an XML document is parsed and represented as a Document
object. The root element of the Document object is your key to
gaining access to the rest of the XML document. Since Java
naturally supports object inheritance, you are able to navigate the
object hierarchy representing your XML document and extract the
information you want. There is no event model to follow or DOM tree
nodes to traverse. Your interaction with the XML document is done
via Java objects (something that is very familiar to Java
programmers).”