Always try to use only the standard XML APIs when writing XML applications. This will keep your application shielded from changes in the underlying implementation of those standard APIs and also gives you more flexibility to change the implementation of the standard pieces without modifying your application code.

Standard API

Java API for XML Processing (JAXP)

Constants
Datatype
Namespace
Parsers
Stream

Events
Utilities

Transform

DOM
SAX
StAX
Stream

Validation
XPath

Document Object Model (DOM)

Bootstrap
Core
Load and Save
Events
HTML
Ranges
Traversal
Views
XPath

Simple API for XML (SAX)

Core
Helper Classes
Extensions

If you need functionality that is not available in the standard APIs like DOM and SAX, then perhaps using the Xerces Native Interface (XNI) will provide the information to build the appropriate parsing tools for your application. For more detailed information regarding XNI, refer to the XNI Manual.

Xerces Native Interface

Core
Parser Configuration
Grammar Interfaces

The XML Schema API specification defines a set of interfaces for accessing and querying the post schema validation infoset (PSVI) defined in Contributions to the post-schema-validation infoset (Appendix C.2). These interfaces provide access to the XML Schema components, which follow as a consequence of validation and/or assessment and also provide a means for accessing the PSVI from a document instance.

Some of the interfaces in the XML Schema API reference interfaces from DOM Level 3 which is now a W3C Recommendation.

XML Schema API

For maintainers and developers of the Xerces2 reference implementation, it's important to know the internal APIs used.

Xerces2 Implementation

The Xerces2 package also contains other implementation classes. You can jump to the API for these classes via the following links:

Other Classes