What Is SAX (Simple API for XML)

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∟SAX (Simple API for XML) Programming Interface

∟What Is SAX (Simple API for XML)

This section provides a quick introduction of SAX (Simple API for XML) - an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows applications to process XML files by handling events fired by the parser while it traverses the XML structure.

What Is SAX (Simple API for XML)? SAX is an event-driven Application Programming Interface (API) that allows applications to process XML files by handling events fired by the parser while it traverses the XML structure.

If an application wants to use SAX to process XML files, it must provide SAX event handlers (call back methods) to perform whatever the application want to do. If no event handler is provided, nothing will be performed on the XML files.

SAX was originally developed for Java language by David Megginson in 1998. Now SAX has been implemented in all major languages:

SAX Project - The original SAX Java project is an open source project located at: http://www.saxproject.org/.
SAX has been implemented in Java in since Java 1.4.
SAX has been implemented in PHP. Sax4PHP is a PHP5 class to manage XML with a Java like SAX API. See http://sax4php.sourceforge.net/ for more information.
SAX has been implemented in Perl. Perl SAX is a SAX Perl implementation developed as an open source product. See http://perl-xml.sourceforge.net/perl-sax/ for more information.

The Apache Xerces is an Apache project that produces implementations of SAX for 3 programming languages. See http://xerces.apache.org/ for more information.

Apache Xerces C++ - A processor for parsing, validating, serializing and manipulating XML, written in C++.
Apache Xerces2 Java - A processor for parsing, validating, serializing and manipulating XML, written in Java.
Apache Xerces Perl - A processor for parsing, validating, serializing and manipulating XML, written in Perl.