How to read XML response from a URL in java?

Question

I need to write a simple function that takes a URL and processes the response which is XML or JSON, I have checked the Sun website https://swingx-ws.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList , but the HttpRequest object is to be found nowhere, is it possible to do this in Java? I`m writting a rich client end app.

Answer 1

For xml parsing of an inputstream you can do:

// the SAX way:
XMLReader myReader = XMLReaderFactory.createXMLReader();
myReader.setContentHandler(handler);
myReader.parse(new InputSource(new URL(url).openStream()));

// or if you prefer DOM:
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = db.parse(new URL(url).openStream());

But to communicate over http from server to client I prefer using hessian library or springs http invoker lib