Real World XML

Navigating in XML Documents

The Node interface available when you use the DOM parser contains all the standard W3C DOM methods for navigating in a document, such as getNextSibling, getPreviousSibling, getFirstChild, getLastChild, and getParent. It's different when you use a SAX parser: This parser does not create a tree of nodes, so those methods don't apply.

Instead, if you want to find a particular element, you have to find it yourself. In the previous chapter, I found the third person's name in this document, which we'll call ch12_08.xml here:

Listing . ch12_08.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?> <MEETINGS> <MEETING TYPE="informal"> <MEETING_TITLE>XML In The Real World</MEETING_TITLE> <MEETING_NUMBER>2079</MEETING_NUMBER> <SUBJECT>XML</SUBJECT> <DATE>6/1/2002</DATE> ...