Android XML Parser – XMLPullParser With Examples [Latest]

Android XML Parser

XML stands for Extensible Mark-up Language. XML files are commonly parsed in android to retrieve the relevant information from them. There are three types of android XML parser that we can use.

1. SAX Parsers
2. DOM Parsers
3. XMLPullParser

DOM Parser : DOM parser use an object based approach where the whole xml is loaded into the memory and validated. Then it starts parsing the xml document. It parses from the starting node to the end node. Particular nodes cannot be parsed. Overall it’s slower than the other two.

SAX and XMLPullParser : These use an object based approach and are similar in terms of memory and performance. SAX is similar to DOM in the context that it begins parsing from top to bottom and there is no way to parse only particular nodes. On the contrary, XMLPullParser can parse particular nodes.

An XML file consists of 4 major components.

1. Prolog : The first line that contains the information about a file is prolog. Typically this is the line:
2. Events : Events in an XML file include simple start and end tags and more
3. Text : It’s simple text in between two tags. Example: My Text</RandomTag
4. Attributes : Attributes are the additional properties of a tag that are present within the tag. Example : Some Text or nested tags

XMLPullParser

XMLPullParser is the recommended android xml parser.

In this tutorial we’ll look to implement an XMLPullParser in our android application.

Android XML Parser Example Project Structure

Android XML Parser code

We’ve created a assets directory inside the main directory and added an xml file there as shown below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<countries>
    <country id="1">
        <name>
            India
        </name>
        <capital>
            New Delhi
        </capital>
    </country>
    <country id="2">
        <name>
            Australia
        </name>
        <capital>
            Canberra
        </capital>
    </country>
    <country id="3">
        <name>
            USA
        </name>
        <capital>
            Washington, D.C.
        </capital>
    </country>
</countries>

Note: The “id” is the attribute.

The MainActivity.java is given below:

package com.journaldev.xmlparsing;
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParser;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserException;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserFactory;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.ArrayList;
public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
    TextView textView;
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        textView= (TextView)findViewById(R.id.text);
        XmlPullParserFactory pullParserFactory;
        try {
            pullParserFactory = XmlPullParserFactory.newInstance();
            XmlPullParser parser = pullParserFactory.newPullParser();
            InputStream in_s = getApplicationContext().getAssets().open("sample.xml");
            parser.setFeature(XmlPullParser.FEATURE_PROCESS_NAMESPACES, false);
            parser.setInput(in_s, null);
            ArrayList<Country> countries=  parseXML(parser);
            String text="";
            for(Country country:countries)
            {
                text+= "id : "+country.getId()+" name : "+country.getName()+" capital : "+country.getCapital()+"n";
            }
            textView.setText(text);
        } catch (XmlPullParserException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    private ArrayList<Country> parseXML(XmlPullParser parser) throws XmlPullParserException,IOException
    {
        ArrayList<Country> countries = null;
        int eventType = parser.getEventType();
        Country country = null;
        while (eventType != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT){
            String name;
            switch (eventType){
                case XmlPullParser.START_DOCUMENT:
                    countries = new ArrayList();
                    break;
                case XmlPullParser.START_TAG:
                    name = parser.getName();
                    if (name.equals("country")){
                        country = new Country();
                        country.id=parser.getAttributeValue(null,"id");
                    } else if (country != null){
                        if (name.equals("name")){
                            country.name = parser.nextText();
                        } else if (name.equals("capital")){
                            country.capital = parser.nextText();
                        }
                    }
                    break;
                case XmlPullParser.END_TAG:
                    name = parser.getName();
                    if (name.equalsIgnoreCase("country") && country != null){
                        countries.add(country);
                    }
                    }
            eventType = parser.next();
        }
        return countries;
        }
}

XMLPullParser instantiation

XMLPullParser can be instantiated in two ways.

1. 
   XmlPullParserFactory pullParserFactory;
   		try {
   			pullParserFactory = XmlPullParserFactory.newInstance();
   			XmlPullParser parser = pullParserFactory.newPullParser();
   		} catch (XmlPullParserException e) {
   			e.printStackTrace();
   		}
   

2. 
   XmlPullParser parser = Xml.newPullParser();
   

   Using switch statements and while loops we parse every tag and look for the relevant data and add the whole object to the ArrayList when the tag ends. We’ve just iterated through the complete ArrayList and appended the strings to display in the default TextView that’s present.

   The output of the application is given below.

3. 

   This brings an end to android xml parser tutorial. You can download the Android XML Parsing using XMLPullParser Project from the link given below.

   Reference: Android Official Doc