SAX stands for Simple API for XML, and is an event-based way of reading XML data from a document.
SAX (Simple API for XML) is an event-based sequential access parser API developed by the XML-DEV mailing list for XML documents.
SAX provides a mechanism for reading data from an XML document that is an alternative to that provided by the Document Object Model (DOM). Where the DOM operates on the document as a whole, SAX parsers operate on each piece of the XML document sequentially.
XML processing with SAX
A parser that implements SAX (i.e., a SAX Parser) functions as a stream parser, with an event-driven API. The user defines a number of callback methods that will be called when events occur during parsing. The SAX events include (among others):
- XML Text nodes
- XML Element Starts and Ends
- XML Processing Instruction
- Instructions XML Comments
Useful references:
