Are there any Java libraries for parsing GPX files? I need to parse many GPX files into our own data structure (our own database).
5 Answers
This question is too old and so do the answers. Thanks to the open source world, we have now jgpx, on google code (forked multiple times on github) and GPXParser, on sourceforge.net. There are also a lot of results for a search on Github.
I'm not sure which one is more mature (one of them is marked as Alpha) but you can try them and let us know here.
Edit
Have a look at processing-gpx, it seems promising.
Here is a quick example
import tomc.gpx.*;
// outside setup()
GPX gpx;
// inside setup()
gpx = new GPX(this);
// when you want to load data
gpx.parse("test.gpx"); // or a URL
// inside draw()
for (int i = 0; i < gpx.getTrackCount(); i++) {
GPXTrack trk = gpx.getTrack(i);
// do something with trk.name
for (int j = 0; j < trk.size(); j++) {
GPXTrackSeg trkseg = trk.getTrackSeg(j);
for (int k = 0; k < trkseg.size(); k++) {
GPXPoint pt = trkseg.getPoint(k);
// do something with pt.lat or pt.lon
}
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < gpx.getWayPointCount(); i++) {
GPXWayPoint wpt = gpx.getWayPoint(i);
// do something with wpt.lat or wpt.lon or wpt.name or wpt.type
}

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It is tied to the Android OS. – David George Dec 22 '20 at 10:32
After some research, there is really no Java API/Lib for parsing GPX files, but I found a nice approach for parsing it using JAXB
Using this Tutorial: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/javase/index-140168.html
Steps:
1. Download GPX 1.0 and 1.1 Schema file (xsd)
2. Generate Java File from it using Eclipse Plugin
3. Init JAXBContext with package name of generated GPX java files (mine was "topografix.gpx.schema10")
4. Parse GPX File
JAXBContext jc = JAXBContext.newInstance("topografix.gpx.schema10");
Unmarshaller unmarshaller = jc.createUnmarshaller();
Gpx root = (Gpx) unmarshaller.unmarshal(new File("sample.gpx"));
List<Trk> tracks = root.getTrk();
....

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Eclipse plugin: broken link :( http://sourceforge.net/projects/jaxb-builder/ perhaps? – Diederik Sep 13 '12 at 09:45
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This is a good place to start off faster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip0T91q70PA – Mohamed Taher Alrefaie Jan 20 '13 at 15:37
Very nice. However, I needed to do:
GpxType gpx = null;
try {
JAXBContext jc = JAXBContext.newInstance(PACKAGE_NAME);
Unmarshaller unmarshaller = jc.createUnmarshaller();
JAXBElement<GpxType> root = (JAXBElement<GpxType>)unmarshaller
.unmarshal(new File(TEST_FILE));
gpx = root.getValue();
} catch(JAXBException ex) {
// TODO
}
List<TrkType> tracks = gpx.getTrk();
for(TrkType track : tracks) {
System.out.println(track.getName());
}
BTW I used http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1.
-Ken

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yes I know, for simplicity I left out try-catch block and for Production code you have to support both 1.0 and 1.1 (so your and mine code combined). What I did was first try to unmarshall using schema10, if it throws an exception, i tried using schema11 (for 1.1). If that fails again that file is not a supported GPX file. – Buju Aug 24 '10 at 10:09
Ready to use, open source, and fully functional java GpxParser (and much more) here https://sourceforge.net/projects/geokarambola/
Details here https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/110606810455751902142
With the above library parsing a GPX file is a one liner:
Gpx gpx = GpxFileIo.parseIn( "SomeGeoCollection.gpx" ) ;
Getting its points, routes or tracks trivial too:
ArrayList<Route> routes = gpx.getRoutes( ) ;

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2I'll give it a try. Would be nice to have it on github and/or as maven repository – ianaz May 22 '16 at 09:55
I'm not aware of any library specialized in parsing GPX files, but since GPX is XML you can use your preferred Java XML parser for reading it.
The GPX format is documented here (includes XSD schema):
http://www.topografix.com/gpx.asp

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1since GPX is very wide spread, I thought there should be some lib/api for that. Because I didn't want to start from scratch especially if someone should have already done that. – Buju Aug 16 '10 at 22:43