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Understanding DOM

Nicholas Chase (nicholas@nicholaschase.com), Author, Web site developer
Nicholas Chase, a Studio B author, has been involved in Web site development for companies such as Lucent Technologies, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Nick has been a high school physics teacher, a low-level radioactive waste facility manager, an online science fiction magazine editor, a multimedia engineer, and an Oracle instructor. More recently, he was the Chief Technology Officer of Site Dynamics Interactive Communications in Clearwater, Florida, USA, and is the author of four books on Web development, including XML Primer Plus (Sams). He loves to hear from readers and can be reached at nicholas@nicholaschase.com.

Summary:  Even before there was XML, there was the Document Object Model, or DOM. It allows a developer to refer to, retrieve, and change items within an XML structure, and is essential to working with XML. In this tutorial, you will learn about the structure of a DOM document. You will also learn how to use Java™ technology to create a Document from an XML file, make changes to it, and retrieve the output.

Date:  12 Mar 2007 (Published 29 Jul 2003)
Level:  Introductory
PDF:  A4 and Letter (95 KB | 29 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity:  42416 views
Comments:  

Resources

Learn

  • For a basic grounding in XML read through the "Introduction to XML" tutorial (developerWorks, August 2002).

  • Check out the W3C DOM page for DOM Recommendations for Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3.

  • In Brett McLaughlin's tip "Moving DOM nodes," learn how to move nodes from one document to another without encountering a common exception (developerWorks, March 2001).

  • Try Brett McLaughlin's tip "Converting from DOM" which explains how to turn a DOM Document into a SAX stream or JDOM document (developerWorks, April 2001).

  • Read Nicholas Chase's tip "Traversing an XML document with a TreeWalker " (developerWorks, October 2002) for an alternate way of looking at a document using DOM Level 2's Traversal module, and his tip "Using a DOM NodeFilter " to expand on that capability (developerWorks, November 2002).

  • One alternative to the DOM is the Simple API for XML, or SAX. SAX allows you to process a document as it's being read, which avoids the need to wait for all of it to be stored before taking action. Find out more about SAX in the developerWorks tutorial "Understanding SAX" (updated July 2003).

  • Order XML Primer Plus , by Nicholas Chase, the author of this tutorial (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324229/ref=nosim/thevanguardsc-20).

  • Find out how you can become an IBM Certified Developer in XML and related technologies (http://www-1.ibm.com/certify/certs/adcdxmlrt.shtml).

Get products and technologies

  • Download the Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition version 1.4.2 (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html).

  • If you're using an older version of Java, download the Apache project's Xerces-Java (http://xml.apache.org/xerces2-j/index.html), or Sun's Java API for XML Parsing (JAXP), part of the Java Web Services Developer Pack (http://java.sun.com/webservices/downloads/webservicespack.html).

  • Download Xerces C++, a validating DOM parser (http://xml.apache.org/xerces-c/index.html).

  • Download Xerces.pm, a Perl API implemented using the Xerces C++ API, which provides access to most of the C++ API from Perl (http://xml.apache.org/xerces-p/index.html).

  • Get IBM's DB2 database (http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2/) which provides not only relational database storage, but also XML-related tools such as the DB2 XML Extender (http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2/extenders/xmlext/) which provides a bridge between XML and relational systems. Visit the DB2 content area to learn more about DB2 (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/db2).

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