What is XML Parsing?

Estimated study time: 10 minutes.

Parsing is the process of reading an XML document and converting its text into a structure a program can actually work with — checking elements, attributes, and text content along the way.

Why You Need a Parser

An XML file is just plain text. To read a specific value (say, a course title) programmatically, you need a parser to interpret the tags, understand the hierarchy, and expose the data through an API your code can call.

What a Parser Checks

• Well-formedness — proper syntax: closed tags, correct nesting, valid characters.
• Validity (optional) — conformance to a DTD or XSD, if one is provided.

Main Categories of Parsers

• Tree-based parsers (DOM) — load the entire document into memory as a navigable tree.
• Event-based parsers (SAX, StAX) — read the document sequentially, firing events or providing a cursor as they go, without loading everything into memory at once.

A Basic Parsing Example (Python)

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse('course.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
print(root.find('title').text)