Comparison of StAX vs SAX parsers in Java

Both StAX and SAX are a type of XML parser APIs. Here, API stands for Application Programming Interface and Parser is used to read and extract content from an XML document in desired format. From this line, it is clear that StAX and SAX are used to read XML documents.

APIs are a modern way to migrate real time information on the Web. In this article, we will discuss the difference between StAX and SAX Parser in Java.

StAX vs SAX Parser

XML

Its full name is eXtensible Markup Language (eXtensible Markup Language), which is said to be a data description language. In it, users can define their own tags as needed. It stores information in a tree-based structure, making it simple and easy to understand.

This is a sample XML document −

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<grocery>
   <cart id = "c101">
     <item> Milk </item>
     <price> 65 </price>
     <quantity> 15 </quantity>
   </cart>
   <cart id = "c102">
     <item> Bread </item>
     <price> 30 </price>
     <quantity> 10 </quantity>
   </cart>
   <cart id = "c103">
     <item> Butter </item>
     <price> 40 </price>
     <quantity> 5 </quantity>
   </cart>
</grocery>

Transferring data from one source to another source requires a transformation of the data format. By parsing methods like StAX and SAX, we can read and transform XML data into required format.

SAX Parser

It is the abbreviation of Simple API for XML. It reads an XML document line by line from beginning to end. Whenever any tag is encountered during parsing, it calls the method and retrieves the information for the user.

For example, suppose we want to access the address from an XML document and there is a tag name 'address' in that document. In that case, when SAX parser reaches that tag, it will call the method to retrieve the address .

SAX parser interface −

• SAXParserFactory − It is the object of the parser, which is the first task of parsing.

• SAXParser − It defines a named method ‘parse()’ that is used for parsing.

• SAXReader − It handles communication with SAX event handlers.

StAX Parser

It is an abbreviation of Streaming API for XML. It was developed to eliminate the of SAX parser. It contains two APIs, one is cursor API and another one is event iterator API. The cursor API handles the reading and writing and the event iterator API handles the events.

StAX parser interface

• XMLStreamReader

• XMLStreamWriter

• XMLEventReader

• XMLEventWriter

Now let’s discuss the differences between StAX and SAX Parser. Consider the following table below −

SAX parser	StAX parser
This is a simple API for XML documents.	This is a streaming API for XML documents.
This is a push type API, meaning it will push the required data.	This is a pull type API, meaning it pulls the required data.
SAX works on event based model.	StAX works not for event-based models but for tree-based models.
It can only perform reading operations on the XML document.	It is bidirectional and can perform both reading and writing operations on the XML document.
There is no or less control over the parsing process. It parses all the information even if we don't need them.	StAX provides complete control over parsing. We can extract the data we need and discard the data we don’t need.
It does not have any additional API.	It provides two additional APIs cursor API and event iterator API.
SAX reads XML files in a top-down manner and cannot provide random access.	StAX also uses top-down reading, but provides random access to information.

Conclusion

In this article, we distinguish between StAX and SAX parsers. Along the way, we discovered XML, which is a data description language. It provides various parsers such as StAX and SAX for reading and writing XML files. The two parsers are similar in many ways, but differ in functionality and how they work.

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