ML2Java is a Java source code generator, which parses the DTD and constructs java classes according to the DTD structure. The generated classes will match the hierarchy in the DTD. If you specify an XML file, the DTD gets extracted and then parsed.

The big goody with XML2Java is that a READER and a WRITER gets generated, too. The generated reader is based on SAX (Version 1 or 2), so you will need a SAX implementation following the JAXP ("Java API for XML Parsing") specification. The generated reader will only be able to parse XML files following the input DTD. The writer is of some 'proprietary' model.

XML2Java comes with a little GUI (de.jNerd.xml.ui.XML2JavaWizard) and a command line tool (de.jNerd.xml.XML2Java). Start-Scripts for WIN32 and Unix are available. I use SUN JDK 1.3 for compiling and testing and recommend it for the use of this tool.

The source code generator was my final research project at Technische Universität München Group of Applied Informatics - Cooperative Systems. If you are interested in a paper in German language containing information about 'xml data binding' concepts in general, the mapping of xml-structure to Java-constructs and the implementation of the source code generator, you can download a pdf version here:

Diplomarbeit:		Von XML nach Java
size: 866KB lang: German		Spezifikation und Entwicklung eines DTD-getriebenen Generators für ein XML-Dokumentenmodell in Java

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