How to read properties from xml file with java?

There are many ways. One is to do JDOM and xpath. Something like this (from this article: http://onjava.com/onjava/2005/01/12/xpath.html): SAXBuilder saxBuilder = new SAXBuilder("org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser"); org.jdom.Document jdomDocument = saxBuilder.build(new File("somefile"); org.jdom.Attribute levelNode = (org.jdom.Attribute)(XPath.selectSingleNode( jdomDocument, "/resources/resource[@id='res003']/property[@name='propF']/@value")); System.out.println(levelNode.getValue()); Did not test it, but should work. For xpath tutorial see http://zvon.org/xxl/XPathTutorial/General/examples.html . Its the best and fastest tutorial. Take care about the saxbuilder lifecycle, if it is called often.

There are serveral parsers you can use. For me these parsers worked fine: http://jsoup.org/ http://simple.sourceforge.net/

I redommend the XStream. It parse the XML in the object with same strutuct. About http://xstream.codehaus.org/ The your object will be: List<Resources> while Resourceshave the attributes, with setters and getters, id that is an object Property with attibutes name and value. Hope this help

If I were you, I would use an interface with your desired methods (getProperty, Resource, etc) and provide an XPath implementation.

This is trivial, assuming you're willing to re-write your properties file into the standard Java format. Assume you have the following in a file called props.xml: <!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd"> <properties> <comment>This is a comment</comment> <entry key="propA">A</entry> <entry key="propB">B</entry> <entry key="propC">C</entry> <entry key="propD">D</entry> <entry key="propE">E</entry> <entry key="propF">F</entry> </properties> Then read properties from the file like this: java.util.Properties prop = new Properties(); prop.loadFromXML(new FileInputStream("props.xml")); System.out.println(prop.getProperty("propF"));

Thanks for all the answers/suggestions! I tried some of the xml libraries given above and decided to go with the http://simple.sourceforge.net/ XML library. I found the "Dictionary" utility class especially useful, to avoid looping through all the elements. Elegant and simple :) Below is how I used it. I hope it can help someone else... Regards, Alex A working example (on Windows Vista): package demo; import java.io.File; import org.simpleframework.xml.Serializer; import org.simpleframework.xml.core.Persister; public class Demo { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { File file = new File("c:\\temp\\resources.xml"); Serializer serializer = new Persister(); Resources resources = serializer.read(Resources.class, file); Resource resource = resources.getResourceByName("res001"); System.out.println(resource.getProperty("propA")); System.out.println(resource.getProperty("propB")); } } Console window: A-001 B-001 Resources.java package demo; import org.simpleframework.xml.ElementList; import org.simpleframework.xml.Root; import org.simpleframework.xml.util.Dictionary; @Root(name="resources") public class Resources { @ElementList(entry = "resource", inline = true) private Dictionary<Resource> resources = new Dictionary<Resource>(); public Resources(@ElementList(entry = "resource", inline = true) Dictionary<Resource> resources) { this.resources = resources; } public Resource getResourceByName(String name){ return resources.get(name); } } Resource.java package demo; import org.simpleframework.xml.Attribute; import org.simpleframework.xml.ElementList; import org.simpleframework.xml.util.Dictionary; import org.simpleframework.xml.util.Entry; public class Resource implements Entry{ @Attribute(name = "name") private final String name; @ElementList(inline=true, name="property") private Dictionary<Property> properties; public Resource( @Attribute(name = "name") String name, @ElementList(inline=true, name="property") Dictionary<Property> properties) { this.name = name; this.properties = properties; } public String getName() { return name; } public String getProperty(String name) { return properties.get(name).getValue(); } } Property.java package demo; import org.simpleframework.xml.Attribute; import org.simpleframework.xml.Root; import org.simpleframework.xml.util.Entry; @Root public class Property implements Entry{ @Attribute(name="name") private String name; @Attribute(name="value") private String value; public Property(@Attribute(name="name") String name, @Attribute(name="value") String value) { this.name = name; this.value = value; } public String getName() { return name; } public String getValue() { return value; } } resources.xml <resources> <resource name="res001"> <property name="propA" value="A-001" /> <property name="propB" value="B-001" /> </resource> <resource name="res002"> <property name="propA" value="A-002" /> <property name="propB" value="B-002" /> </resource> <resource name="res003"> <property name="propA" value="A-003" /> <property name="propB" value="B-003" /> </resource> </resources>