Java Course 12: XML & XSL, Web & Servlets

Java and the Web:Java and the Web:XML, XSL, ServletsXML, XSL, Servlets

Java course - IAG0040Java course - IAG0040

Anton Keks 2011

Lecture 13Lecture 13Slide Slide 22

Java course – IAG0040Java course – IAG0040Anton KeksAnton Keks

Introduction to XMLIntroduction to XML

● XML = Extensible Markup Language– recommended by W3C general-purpose markup language

– includes text and extra information (markup)

– “simplified SGML”

– meta-language, can be used to create new ones● XML has hit the “sweet spot” between simplicity and

flexibility

– very widely used for exchange of various data

– even HTML has been retrofitted as XHTML– MathML, MusicXML, SVG, WSDL, RSS, OpenDocument, etc



XML design goalsXML design goals

● Human-readable– human-readable and self-descriptive markup

– text files, supports Unicode

● Easily machine-parseable– strict structure, well-defined formal rules

– well-compressible for storage and transmission

– platform-independent

● Multi-purpose and extensible– hierarchical structure: records, lists, trees

– schemas, namespaces



XML syntaxXML syntax

● Single element– <name attribute="value">content</name>

● Example document– <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<recipe name="bread" prepTime="5 mins" cookTime="3 hours"><title>Basic bread</title><ingredient amount="3" unit="cups">Flour</ingredient><ingredient amount="0.25" unit="ounce">Yeast</ingredient><ingredient amount="1.5" unit="cups" state="warm">Water</ingredient><ingredient amount="1" unit="teaspoon">Salt</ingredient><instructions>

<step>Mix all ingredients together, and knead thoroughly.</step><step>Cover with a cloth, and leave for one hour in warm room.</step><step>Knead again, place in a tin, and then bake in the oven.</step>

</instructions></recipe>



XML StructureXML Structure● XML Declaration (version, encoding, external dependencies)

– <?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" encoding="UTF-8"?>

● Document type definitions (DTD): <!DOCTYPE example [ ... ]>

● Single root element, nested elements, some with attributes and content

– <name attribute="value">content</name> or <foo/>

– starting and ending tag, content or nested elements between, no overlapping

– case-sensitive

● Special chars and entities

– predefined: & < > ' " &#DDD; &#xHH;

– more can be declared: <!ENTITY copy "©">

– unescaped data: <![CDATA[ A & B ]]>

● Comments: 



XML correctnessXML correctness

● Well-formed– conforms to all syntax rules

● Valid (only if well-formed)

– data and structure conforms to a set of rules, describing correct data values and locations

– must comply to a schema– DTD – a part of XML spec– More functional: XML Schema (XSD), RELAX NG



DTD exampleDTD example

● DTD = Document Type Definition

● Declaration

– <!DOCTYPE customer [ element declarations here ]> - internal DTD

– <!DOCTYPE customer SYSTEM "customer.dtd"> - external DTD

– <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

● Content

– <!ELEMENT people_list (person*)><!ELEMENT person (name, birthdate?, gender?, personal_id?)><!ATTLIST person index CDATA #REQUIRED><!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT birthdate (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT gender (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT personal_id (#PCDATA)>



XML NamespacesXML Namespaces

● Help to avoid naming conflicts

● Allow merging of XML documents with different semantics

● Uses prefixes to distinguish namespaces

– <xhtml:table><xhtml:tr/></xhtml:table>

– prefix names are not fixed, defined in declaration● xmlns:prefix=”namespaceURI”● <h:table xmlns:h=”http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/”>

– default namespace can be declared with xmlns alone

● <table xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/”>



XSD: W3C XML SchemaXSD: W3C XML Schema

● XML-based

● Has more features than DTD

● Namespaces are directly supported

● Data model

– the vocabulary ● element and attribute names

– the content model● relationships, structure, ordering

– the data types● semantics and validation rules



XSD (cont)XSD (cont)● Schema example (country.xsd)

– <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"><xs:element name="country" type="countryType"/><xs:complexType name="countryType">

<xs:sequence><xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/><xs:element name="population" type="xs:decimal"/>

</xs:sequence></xs:complexType>

</xs:schema>

● Declaration (country.xml)

– <country xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="country.xsd">

<name>France</name><population>59.7</population></country>

– <c:country xmlns:c="http://java.azib.net/country" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.azib.net/country country.xsd"> </c:country>



Unit testingUnit testing● XMLUnit is a 3rd party addition to JUnit

– was designed for JUnit 3.x, however perfectly usable with JUnit 4

– provides XMLAssert class that can be statically imported

● import static org.custommonkey.xmlunit.XMLAssert.*;

● assertXXX() methods take XML as String or Document

– simplifies code testing that works with XML● XML equality and similarity checking● Validation● XPath evaluation and checking● Transformation



● XPath is a language for finding information in an XML document

– uses path expressions to select nodes (elements, attributes)

– has a library of built-in functions

– XML documents are treated as trees of nodes

● Sample XPath expressions

– /bookstore/book – all book elements under bookstore

– //book – all book elements in the document

– @lang – the value of lang attribute of current element

– bookstore/book[price > 35.00] – all books costing more than 35

– //book[@lang='en'] – all books in English

– book[1]/author[1]/name – first author of the first book

– book[last() - 1] – the book before the last one

XPathXPath



Introduction to XSLIntroduction to XSL

● Meaning of arbitrary XML tags is not well understood by e.g. a web browser

● XSL describes how the XML document should be displayed

● XSL = Extensible Stylesheet Language

– XML based, again● XSLT = XSL Transformations

– can be used to transform one XML format to another XML or other text format (very often HTML or XHTML)

● XSL-FO – a language for formatting XML documents (to produce, e.g. PDF documents, images, graphics, etc)



XSLT basicsXSLT basics● Assigning stylesheets

– <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="file.xsl"?>

● XSL stylesheet

– <xsl:stylesheet version=”1.0” xmlns:xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform”>

– then, one or more templates are defined<xsl:template match=”/”>

<contents><xsl:copy-of select=”.”/></contents></xsl:template>

– Various xsl elements are used for querying of data using XPath

● all match, select, and test attributes take XPath expressions

● in other attributes, you can put XPath into {}

– Most used elements: copy-of, value-of, for-each, sort, if, choose, apply-templates, call-template



XML ParsingXML Parsing● There are 3 different ways to work with XML

– DOM = Document Object Model● stores the full XML tree in memory as objects● convenient to work with, but not suitable for very large XMLs

– SAX = Streaming API for XML● reads (streams) XML data and produces events● no access to the full document, state must be maintained manually● no limits on XML size, generally faster

– XPP, XML Pull Parser (SAX is a 'push' parser)● non-standard, not bundled with Java● does not produce events, but rather waits for the client program to

'pull' information about parsing, then continues processing



Introduction to JAXPIntroduction to JAXP

● JAXP = Java API for XML Processing– javax.xml.parsers

● DocumentBuilder – DOM, SAXParser – SAX– javax.xml.xpath

● XPath – compilation and evaluation of XPath expressions– javax.xml.transform

● Transformer – XSLT– JAXP defines only interfaces, implementations are pluggable

● access to the implementations is via Factories– DocumentBuilderFactory, SAXParserFactory, etc

● Java 1.6 bundles Apache Xerces and Xalan



JAXP overviewJAXP overview

● Other parts of the API are in packages, according to standards that define them– DOM is in org.w3c.dom

● Document, Node, Element, Attr, etc interfaces for storing of DOM trees

– SAX is in org.xml.sax● XMLReader, ContentHandler interfaces for

handling/producing of SAX events



JAXP and DOMJAXP and DOM

● javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory - creates DocumentBuilder instances. Used to set various attributes for the parser, including its validating behavior.

● javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder - performs parsing and creates DOM Documents representing parsed XML

● org.w3c.dom.Document - represents the root of the XML DOM tree. An element that contains the elements of the document.

● org.w3c.dom.Node - a single node in the document tree. A node can be an element, an attribute, an entity, a document, or a text node.

● org.w3c.dom.NodeList - an ordered enumeration of nodes

● org.w3c.dom.Element - a Node representing an XML element

● org.w3c.dom.Attr - an attribute attached to an Element

● org.w3c.dom.Text - a text Node (content of an element), CharacterData



JAXP and SAXJAXP and SAX

● org.xml.sax.SAXParserFactory - creates SAXParser instances. Allows various parameters to be set for the creation of the parser.

● javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser - used to initiate parsing of XML documents. Encapsulates an XMLReader for generation of SAX events.

● org.xml.sax.XMLReader - used to register event handlers. Calls the callback methods as content being scanned (generates SAX events)

● org.xml.sax.ContentHandler - the interface to implement in order to receive SAX events. Instance must be registered with XMLReader.

● org.xml.sax.ErrorHandler – the interface to implement in order to handle parsing errors.

● org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler - default implementation of ContentHandler, ErrorHandler and a couple of other interfaces; can be extended to simplify SAX event handling.



JAXP and XSLJAXP and XSL

● javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory - creates Transformer instances, either simple, that just copies source to the result, or with an associated stylesheet that does the actual transformation

● javax.xml.transform.Transformer - represents the transformation rules (stylesheet); used to transform the source XML and write the result

● javax.xml.transform.Source - interface for sources of transformation. Used to provide both the stylesheet and the XML to the Transformer.

– Implementations: DOMSource, SAXSource, StreamSource, etc

● javax.xml.transform.Result - interface for writing of transformation result.

– Implementations: DOMResult, SAXResult, StreamResult, etc

● javax.xml.transform.ErrorListener – interface for customized error handling



JAXP and XPathJAXP and XPath

● javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory - creates XPath instances and can be used to define custom XPathFunctionResolver and XPathVariableResolver

● javax.xml.xpath.XPath - XPath evaluation environment. Used to compile and evaluate XPath expressions. Evaluation takes the context node as a parameter to evaluate the expression on.

● javax.xml.xpath.XPathExpression - compiled XPath expression, used directly for multiple evaluations of same expressions.

● javax.xml.xpath.XPathConstants - a mapping between XPath and Java data types



JAXBJAXB

● JAXB = Java API for XML Binding– XML serialization of Java objects– javax.xml.bind– Involves generation of Java classes according to

the XML schema or vice-versa– JAXBContext is a factory for Marshaller and

Unmarshaller



JDOM & DOM4JJDOM & DOM4J

● org.w3c.dom API was designed for any OO language and was mapped to Java more or less directly

– the resulting API is not very convenient for Java● Two similar 3rd party DOM APIs address this

– JDOM is more lightweight and was proposed for inclusion in Java SE

– DOM4J has integrated support for XPath, provides better interoperability with W3C DOM and Transformer

– Most operations can be done using single method calls

– Java Strings and Collections are used



XML generationXML generation

● There are many options:– String concatenation

● inflexible, can easily produce broken XML

– Programmatic creation of DOM tree– Manual generation of SAX events– JDOM/DOM4J– XML marshalling using JAXB or similar API– Template engines, e.g. StringTemplate, Velocity

● basically pre-created XML files with 'holes' that can be filled with data



ServletsServlets

● Servlets are server-side Java applications

● Now javax.servlet API is officially a part of Java EE

● They process asynchronous requests and generate responses

● Servlets are most often used in Web applications

● Servlets are deployed and run within containers (web application servers)

– there are many commercial application servers

– Jetty and Tomcat are open-source ones● JSP (Java Server Pages) are PHP/ASP-like Java files with

embedded HTML, but they must be compiled into servlets(usually on-the-fly)



Servlet APIServlet API● A Servlet must implement javax.servlet.Servlet interface. However,

most servlets extend either javax.servlet.GenericServlet or javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.

● A container creates a single instance of the servlet class using the default constructor, then it calls the init() method

● On every client request, the service() method is called

– for HTTP, there are various higher-level methods defined, e.g. doGet(), doPost(), doPut(), doDelete(), etc

– these methods must be thread-safe because they are executed concurrently. javax.servlet.SingleThreadModel interface can tell the container not to do it.

– all these methods take HttpServletRequest and HttpServletResponse as parameters



HttpServletRequestHttpServletRequest

● HttpServletRequest is for reading user's input

– getParameter() is for reading of HTTP request parameters

– getHeader() is for reading HTTP headers

– getCookies() is for examining the available cookies

– getSession() creates/obtains the HTTP session

– getReader() / getInputStream() are for reading of large request payloads (e.g. uploaded files)

– getLocalXXX() / getServerXXX() return various info about the host, where servlet is running and the server itself

– getRemoteXXX() returns various info on the remote client

– various other methods provide even more information



HttpServletResponseHttpServletResponse

● HttpServletResponse is for generating the response to the user

– addCookie() adds a cookie to the response

– addHeader() adds an arbitrary HTTP header to the response

– getWriter() / getOutputStream() provide a stream for writing of response content, not further header modifications are possible if isCommitted() returns true

– sendError() / setStatus() is for setting response status codes

– setContentLength() sets the size in bytes of outputted content

– setContentType() sets the MIME type of outputted content (text/html for HTML content)

– There are a lot of SC_XXX status code constants defined

– There are many other useful methods



SessionsSessions

● Sessions are used to persist some information (state) about the client between asynchronous requests

● Provided by HttpSession interface

– request.getSession() returns an instance

– session attributes are any Objects with String keys, they are persisted until session is either invalidate()'d or expired (after 30 min by default)

● Servlet container uses either cookies or URL-rewriting to pass/retrieve the session ID

– response.encodeURL() must be used with any output URLs for URL-rewriting to work, in case cookies are not available

– these URLs typically look like this:http://host/servlet;jsessionid=72183CAFE23?abc=hello



Servlet FiltersServlet Filters

● Filters can be used to pre- or post-process requests

– Called in chain, one after another before the servlet, like decorator pattern

– Can be used for access control, logging, context initialization, compression, etc

● Need to implement javax.servlet.Filter

– Method doFilter(request, response, chain)

– To delegate processing further down the chain (optional), callchain.doFilter(request, response)

– Or requests can be processed directly just like in a servlet



DeploymentDeployment

● Web applications typically have defined directory structure

– The root of the application is the document root, e.g. where images and other static content is located

– There is a WEB-INF directory. Files contained there are hidden from direct access

● web.xml – deployment descriptor, defines URL-patterns, deployed servlets, various parameters, etc

● classes – directory with compiled .class files● lib – directory with .jar files (all are automatically

loaded)● Another possibility is to put the same things into a single .war

(Web ARchive) file, which is in the same format as .jar



web.xml exampleweb.xml example<?xml version="1.0"?><web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2eehttp://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">

<servlet><servlet-name>Hello</servlet-name><servlet-class>net.azib.java.HelloServlet</servlet-class><init-param>

<param-name>name</param-name><param-value>mega_value</param-value>

</init-param></servlet><servlet-mapping>

<servlet-name>Hello</servlet-name><url-pattern>/hello*</url-pattern>

</servlet-mapping></web-app>

http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee

http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance



Apache DigesterApache Digester

● Is a 3rd party jar for reading of XML

– stores data directly in Java domain object tree (not DOM), e.g. Customer, Order

– similar to unmarshalling; stack-based approach

– rules can be created either programmatically or put into an XML file

● Example

– Digester digester = new Digester();digester.push(this);

digester.addObjectCreate(“customers/customer”, Customer.class);digester.setProperties(“customers/customer”);digester.addSetNext(“customers/customer”, “addCustomer”,

Customer.class.getName());

digester.addCallMethod(“customers/customer/address”, “setAddress”, 0);

digester.parse(“customers.xml”);



More infoMore info

● Good source of information and tutorials about all W3, XML and related technologies– http://www.w3schools.com/http://www.w3schools.com/

http://www.w3schools.com/