EAXY - An easy to use XML library for Java

EAXY is a Java library for building, parsing, searching and manipulating XML.

It is small (< 50 kB) and has no dependencies. It's aim is to have a compact syntax for doing the most common operations on XML and HTML trees.

Overview

EAXY is build with the following guiding principles:

• Namespaces must be build in from the start
• Utility methods are good
• Links to parent nodes and document complicates matters
• Libraries should not have dependencies

Building XML documents:

    Namespace A_NS = new Namespace("uri:a", "a");
    Namespace B_NS = new Namespace("uri:b", "b");

    Element xml = A_NS.el("root",
            Xml.el("node-without-namespace", "element text"), 
            A_NS.el("parent", 
                    A_NS.el("child")),
            B_NS.el("other-parent", Xml.text("Here's some text")));

Manipulating XML documents:

    Element div = el("div");
    assertThat(div.className()).isNull();
    div.addClass("important");
    div.addClass("hidden");
    assertThat(div.className()).isEqualTo("important hidden");
    div.removeClass("hidden");
    div.removeClass("hidden");
    assertThat(div.className()).isEqualTo("important");
    div.removeClass("important");
    assertThat(div.className()).isEmpty();

Finding contents of XML documents:

    Element xml = el("div",
            el("div").id("not-here").add(text("something")),
            el("div").id("below-here").add(
                    el("div", el("div", el("p", text("around "), el("span", "HERE"), text(" around"))))));
    assertThat(xml.find("...", "#below-here", "...", "p", "...").first().text())
        .isEqualTo("HERE");

HTML utilities:

    Element form = el("form",
            el("input").id("first_name_id").name("first_name").type("text").val("Darth"),
            el("input").id("last_name_id").name("last_name").type("text").val("Vader"),
            el("input").name("createPerson").type("submit").val("Create person"));
    assertThat(form.find("input").ids()).containsExactly("first_name_id", "last_name_id");
    assertThat(form.find("input").values()).containsExactly("Darth", "Vader", "Create person");
    assertThat(form.find("input").names()).containsExactly("first_name", "last_name", "createPerson");

    assertThat(form.find("input").first().val()).isEqualTo("Darth");

Known issues:

• SAX namespace may be broken with certain classpath combinations - perhaps I need to write my own parser
• Finding doesn't include the current element, which is often non-intuitive
• The "..." syntax is unintuitive and could use some improvement