Piccolo is a non-validating XML parser for Java supporting the SAX1, SAX2 with extensions 1.0, and JAXP 1.1 SAX parsing specifications. Piccolo has been tested using the xmlconf test suite and correctly parses all well-formed documents and correctly identifies all but one well-formedness error. See the installation and usage information below for the interface you'll be using. Documentation on the source code is also available, as is the javadoc.

JAXP

Installation (choose one)

1. Put Piccolo.jar in your $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext directory. Note: if you have more than one JAXP library installed, you'll need to add the line javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory=com.bluecast.xml.JAXPSAXParserFactory to your $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/jaxp.properties file.
2. Put Piccolo.jar in your classpath before any other JAXP libraries.
3. Put Piccolo.jar anywhere in your classpath and set the system property as described in step 1 or at run time using the -D option.

Piccolo is a non-validating parser, but it will create a validating parser when requested through JAXP. Piccolo will automatically search for another JAXP library to create the validating parser. You can also specify which JAXP factory class to use. If you wish to use Xerces, for example, put this line in jaxp.properties:

com.bluecast.xml.ValidatingSAXParserFactory=org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserFactoryImpl

Usage

import org.xml.sax.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;

SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
factory.setNamespaceAware(false);

XMLReader xmlReader = factory.newSAXParser().getXMLReader();

xmlReader.setContentHandler(new MyContentHandler());
xmlReader.parse("somexmlfile.xml");

SAX

Installation

For SAX2, set the org.xml.sax.driver system property to com.bluecast.xml.Piccolo. For SAX1, set org.xml.sax.parser to com.bluecast.xml.Piccolo.

1. Put piccolo.jar in your jre/lib/ext directory. Note: if you have more than one JAXP parser installed, you'll need to add the line javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory = com.bluecast.xml.JAXPSAXParserFactory to your $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/jaxp.properties file.
2. Put piccolo.jar in your classpath before any other JAXP libraries.
3. Put piccolo.jar anywhere in your classpath and set the system property as described in step 1 or at run time using the -D option.

Usage (example is for SAX2 extensions 1.0)

import org.xml.sax.*;
import org.xml.sax.ext.*;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.*;

XMLReader xmlReader = XMLReaderFactory.createXMLReader();

// This class also implements the LexicalHandler and DeclHandler extensions
MyContentHandler myCH = new MyContentHandler();

xmlReader.setProperty("http://xml.org/sax/properties/lexical-handler",myCH);
xmlReader.setProperty("http://xml.org/sax/properties/declaration-handler",myCH);

xmlReader.setContentHandler(myCH);
xmlReader.parse("somexmlfile.xml");

XSL

Piccolo itself does not support XSL transformations. XSLT is usually implemented as a layer that sits on top of an XML parser. Many XSLT packages will simply use JAXP to create a SAX2 parser and therefore work well with Piccolo. One such package is SAXON. To configure SAXON (and many other XSLT packages) to use Piccolo as the underlying XML parser:

1. Copy Piccolo.jar to your $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext.
2. Add the line javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory=com.bluecast.xml.JAXPSAXParserFactory to your $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/jaxp.properties file.