<html>
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="">
  <title>OM Tutorial</title>
  <link href="css/axis-docs.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/>
</head>

<body>
<!-- Header section 
<table width="100%">
<tr>
<td align="left"><h1>Apache Axis2</h1></td>
<td align="right"><img alt="" src="images/axis2.jpg"/></td>
</tr>
</table>
end of header section -->

<h1>OM Tutorial</h1>

<h2>Introduction</h2>

<h3>What is OM?</h3>

<p>OM stands for Object Model (also known as AXIOM - AXis Object Model) and
refers to the XML infoset model that is developed for Axis 2. XML infoset
refers to the information included inside the XML and for programmatical
manipulation it is convenient to have a representation of this XML infoset in
a language specific manner. For an object oriented language the obvious
choice is a model made up of objects. DOM and JDOM are two such XML models.
OM is conceptually similar to such an XML model by its external behavior but
deep down it is very much different. The objective of this tutorial is to
introduce the basics of OM and explain the best practices to follow while
using OM. However before entering the deep end of OM it is better to skim the
surface and see what it is all about!</p>

<h3>For whom is this Tutorial?</h3>

<p>This tutorial can be used by anybody who is interested in OM and need to
go deeper in it. However it is assumed that the reader has a basic
understanding of the concepts of XML (such as Namespaces) and a working
knowledge of tools such as Ant. Knowledge in similar object models such as
DOM will be quite helpful in understanding OM but such knowledge is not
assumed. Several Links are listed in the appendix/ links section that will
help understand the basics of XML.</p>

<h3>What is Pull Parsing ?</h3>
Pull parsing is a recent trend in XML processing. The previously popular XML
processing frameworks such as SAX and DOM were "push-based" which means the
control of the parsing was with the parser itself. This approach is fine and
easy to use but it was not efficient in handling large XML documents since a
complete memory model will be generated in the memory. Pull parsing inverts
the control and hence the parser only proceeds at the users command. The user
can decide to store or discard events generated from the parser. OM is based
on pull parsing. To learn more about XML pull parsing see the <a
href="http://www.bearcave.com/software/java/xml/xmlpull.html">XML pull
parsing introduction</a>.

<h3>A Bit of History</h3>

<p>The original OM was proposed as a store for the pull parser events for
later processing, at the Axis summit held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in September
2004. However this approach was soon improved and OM was pursued as a
complete info set model due to its flexibility. Several implementation
techniques were attempted during the initial phases. The two most promising
techniques were the table based technique and the link list based technique.
During the intermediate performance tests the link list based technique
proved to be much more memory efficient for smaller and mid sized XML
documents (the advantage of the table based OM was only visible for the large
and very large XML documents) and hence the link list based technique was
chosen as the most suitable. Initial efforts were focused on implementing the
XML info set items which are relevant to the SOAP specification (DTD support,
Processing Instruction support, etc were not considered). The advantage of
having a tight integration was evident at this stage and this resulted in
having SOAP specific interfaces as part of OM rather than a layer on top of
it. OM was deliberately made API centric. It allows the implementations to
take place independently and swapped without affecting the program later.</p>

<h3>Features of OM</h3>

<p>OM is a lightweight, differed built XML info set representation based on
StAX (<a
href="http://www.jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/first/jsr173/">JSR
173</a>), which is the standard streaming pull parser API. The object model
can be manipulated as flexibly as any other object model (Such as <a
href="http://www.jdom.org/">JDOM</a>), but underneath the objects will be
created only when they are absolutely required. This leads to much less
memory intensive programming. Following is a short feature overview of OM.</p>
<ul>
  <li>Lightweight: OM is specifically targeted to be lightweight. This is
    achieved by reducing the depth of the hierarchy, number of methods and
    the attributes enclosed in the objects. This makes the objects less
    memory intensive.</li>
  <li>Differed building: By far this is the most important feature of OM. The
    objects are not made unless a need arises for them. This passes the
    control of building over to the object model itself rather than an
    external builder.</li>
  <li>Pull based: For a differed building mechanism a pull based parser is
    required. OM is based on StAX, the standard pull parser API.</li>
</ul>
<!-- Special section -->

<p class="special"></p>

<table width="100%">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td><img src="images/OM005.gif" alt="Remember this" width="35"
        height="57"></td>
      <td class="special-td">OM is tightly bound to StAX API. To work with OM
        a StAX compliant parser and the API <i>must</i> be present in the
        classpath.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<!-- End of special section -->

<p>The Following image shows how OM API is viewed by the user</p>
<!-- Image -->

<p align="center" class="img"><img alt="" src="images/archi006.jpg"
                                   class="img" width="490" height="282"></p>

<p align="center" class="img-title">Figure 1</p>
<!--  End of Image -->

<p>OM Builder wraps the raw xml character stream through the StAX reader API.
Hence the complexities of the pull event stream is covered</p>

<h3>A Bit About Caching</h3>

<p>Since OM is a differed built Object model, It incorporates the concept of
caching. Caching refers to the creation of the objects while parsing the pull
stream. The reason why this is so important is because caching can be turned
off in certain situations. if so the  parser proceeds without building the
object structure. User can extract the raw pull stream from OM and use that
instead of the OM and in this case it is sometimes beneficial to switch off
caching. The advanced operations section explains more on accessing the raw
pull stream and switching the caching on and off.</p>

<h3>Where Does SOAP Come into Play?</h3>

<p>In a nutshell SOAP is a information exchange protocol based on XML. SOAP
has a defined set of XML elements that should be used in messages. Since Axis
is a "SOAP Engine" and OM is built for Axis, A set of SOAP specific objects
were also defined along with OM. These SOAP Objects are extensions of the
general OM objects. See <a
href="http://www.w3schools.com/SOAP/soap_intro.asp"> here </a> to learn more
about SOAP.</p>
<!--<p>This abstraction provides</p>
<ul>
<li>differed building support</li>
<li>Caching</li>
</ul>
<p>AXIOM has the flexibility to plug in any builder which implements the given builders interface.  The upcoming sections of this tutorial deal with the creation and usage of OM for manipulating SOAP (and to some extent nonSOAP) based XML documents.</p>
-->

<h2>Working with OM</h2>

<h3>Obtaining the OM binary</h3>

<p>OM is not a separate product but part of Axis2. But Axis2 provides a
minimal jar which contains the run time of Axis2. This axis2-core-0.95.jar
contains the compiled version of OM module.</p>

<p>The easiest way to obtain the OM binary is to download the Axis2 minimal
binary distribution.  <font color="red" style="color: #000000">The lib
directory will contain the <span
style="color: #000000">axis2-</span></font><font style="color: #000000"><span
style="color: #000000">core</span></font><font color="red"
style="color: #000000"><span
style="color: #000000">-0.95.jar</span></font><span style="color: #000000">.
However more adventurous users can build the OM from source, which is
described in the next section. In this way one get only the "OM
jar".</span></p>

<p>Detailed information on getting source from Axis2 SVN repository can be
found <a href="../svn.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>

<p>After the source download, OM-binary can be built. For both Windows and
Linux move it to the project directory and execute the command "maven jar".
All other necessary jars will be automatically downloaded. <em> </em><font
color="red"><span style="color: #000000">When the build finishes
successfully, the <span style="color: #000000">axis2-xml-0.95.jar</span> can
be found in the newly created "targets" directory in the XML
module.</span></font></p>

<p>Once the OM-binary is obtained by any of the above ways , it should be
included in the classpath for any of the OM based programs to work.
Subsequent sections of this tutorial assume that this build step is complete
and the <font color="red"><span style="color: #000000">axis2-core-0.95.jar
or</span> <span style="color: #000000">axis2-xml-0.95.jar </span></font>is
correct in the classpath along with the StAX API jar file and a StAX
implementation.</p>

<h3>Creation</h3>

<p>Creation is the first and foremost action when using an Object
representation. This part explains how OM can be built from an existing
document or just programmatically. OM provides a notion of a factory and a
builder to create objects. The factory helps to keep the code at the
interface level and the implementations separately (Figure 2). Since OM is
tightly bound to StAX, a StAX compliant reader should be created first with
the desired input stream. Then the reader should be fed into the
OMXMLBuilderFactory to instantiate a suitable builder. The interface provided
by the builder is identical, though the internal implementations vary.
However, the types of the returned objects depend on the implementation of
the builder. For example the SOAPModelBuilder returns SOAP specific objects
(such as the SOAPEnvelope, which are sub classes of the OMElement) through
its builder methods. The following piece of code shows the correct method of
creating an OM document from an input stream. Note that the SOAP builder is
used in this example.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 1</b></p>
</div>
<source><pre>//create the parser<br/>
XMLStreamReader parser = XMLInputFactory.newInstance().createXMLStreamReader(new FileReader(file));
<br/>//create the builder<br/>
OMXMLParserWrapper builder = OMXMLBuilderFactory.createStAXSOAPModelBuilder(OMAbstractFactory.getSOAP11Factory(), parser); 
//get the root element (in this case the envelope)<br/>
        SOAPEnvelope envelope = (SOAPEnvelope) builder.getDocumentElement();</pre>
</source>
<p>As the example shows, creating an OM from an input stream is pretty
straightforward. However elements and nodes can be created programmatically
to modify the structure as well. The recommended way to create OM objects
programmatically is to use the factory. OMAbstractFactory.getOMFactory() will
return the proper factory and the creator methods for each type should be
called. Currently OM has two builders, namely the OM builder and the SOAP
model builder. These builders provide the necessary information to the XML
info set model to build itself.</p>
<!-- Image -->

<p class="img"><img src="images/archi007.jpg" alt="OM Structure 2"
class="img" width="420" height="246"></p>

<p class="img-title">Figure 2</p>
<!--  End of Image -->

<p>A simple example is shown below.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 2</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">//create a factory
OMFactory factory = OMAbstractFactory.getOMFactory();
//use the factory to create two namespace objects
OMNamespace ns1 = factory.createOMNamespace("bar","x");
OMNamespace ns2 = factory.createOMNamespace("bar1","y");
//use the factory to create three elements
OMElement root = factory.createOMElement("root",ns1);
OMElement elt11 = factory.createOMElement("foo1",ns1);
OMElement elt12 = factory.createOMElement("foo2",ns1);</pre>

<p>The reason to have a set of factory.createXXX methods is to cater for
different implementations but keep the programmers code intact. Its highly
recommend to use the factory for creating OM objects as this will ease the
switching of different OM implementations. Several differences exist between
a programmatically created OMNode and a conventionally built OMNode. The most
important difference is that the former will have no builder object enclosed,
where as the latter always carries a reference to its builder. As stated
earlier in this tutorial, since the object model is built as and when
required, each and every OMNode should have a reference to its builder. If
this information is not available, it is due to the Object being created
without a builder. This difference becomes evident when the user tries to get
a non caching pull parser from the OMElement. This will be discussed in more
detail in the advanced operations section.</p>

<p>In order to understand the requirement of the builder reference in each
and every OMNode, consider the following scenario. Assume that the parent
element is built but the children elements are not. If the parent is asked to
iterate through its children, this information is not readily available to
the parent element and it should build its children first before attempting
to iterate them. In order to provide a reference of the builder, each and
every node of an OM structure should carry the reference to its builder. Each
and every OMNode carries a flag that states its build status. Apart from this
restriction there are no other constraints that keep the programmer away from
mixing up programmatically made OMNode objects with OMNode objects built from
builders.</p>

<p>The SOAP Object hierarchy is made in the most natural way for a
programmer. An inspection of the API will show that it is quite close to the
SAAJ API but with no bindings to DOM or any other model. The SOAP classes
extend basic OM classes (such as the element) hence one can access a SOAP
document either with the abstraction of SOAP or drill down to the underlying
XML Object model with a simple casting.</p>
<!--  The following illustration of the actual class diagram will be helpful in understanding this.
Need an image here -->

<h3>Addition of Nodes</h3>

<p>Addition and removal methods are primarily defined in the OMElement
interface. The following are the most important in adding nodes.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 3</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">public void addChild(OMNode omNode);
public void addAttribute(OMAttribute attr);</pre>

<p>This code segment shows how the addition takes place. Note that it is
related to the code segment shown in the creation section.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 4</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">//set the children
elt11.addChild(elt21);
elt12.addChild(elt22);
root.addChild(elt11);
root.addChild(elt12);</pre>
<ul>
  <li>AddChild method will always add the child as the first child of the
    parent.</li>
  <li><p>A given node can be removed from the tree by calling the detach()
    method. A node can also be removed from the tree by calling the remove
    method of the returned iterator which will also call the detach method of
    the particular node internally.</p>
  </li>
  <li>Namespaces are a tricky part of any XML object model and is the same in
    OM. However the interface to the namespace have been made very simple.
    OMNamespace is the class that represents a namespace with intentionally
    removed setter methods. This makes the OMNamespace immutable and allows
    the underlying implementation to share the objects without any
  difficulty.</li>
</ul>

<p>Following are the important methods available in OMElement to handle
namespaces.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 5</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">public OMNamespace declareNamespace(String uri, String prefix);
public OMNamespace declareNamespace(OMNamespace namespace);
public OMNamespace findNamespace(String uri, String prefix) throws OMException;</pre>

<p>The declareNamespaceXX methods are fairly straightforward. They add a
namespace to namespace declarations section. Note that a namespace
declaration that has already being added will not be added twice.
FindNamespace is a very handy method to locate a namespace object higher up
the object tree. It searches for a matching namespace in its own declarations
section and jumps to the parent if it's not found. The search progresses up
the tree until a matching namespace is found or the root has been reached.</p>

<p>During the serialization a directly created namespace from the factory
will only be added to the declarations when that prefix is encountered by the
serializer. More of the serialization matters will be discussed in the
serializer section.</p>

<p>The following simple code segment shows how the namespaces are dealt with
in OM</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 6</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">OMFactory factory = OMAbstractFactory.getOMFactory();
OMNamespace ns1 = factory.createOMNamespace("bar","x");
OMElement root = factory.createOMElement("root",ns1);
OMNamespace ns2 = root.declareNamespace("bar1","y");
OMElement elt1 = factory.createOMElement("foo",ns1);
OMElement elt2 = factory.createOMElement("yuck",ns2);
OMText txt1 = factory.createText(elt2,"blah");
elt2.addChild(txt1);
elt1.addChild(elt2);
root.addChild(elt1);</pre>

<p>Serilization of the root element produces the following XML</p>
<pre class="xml">&lt;x:root xmlns:x="bar" xmlns:y="bar1"&gt;
  &lt;x:foo&gt;
        &lt;y:yuck&gt;blah&lt;/y:yuck&gt;
  &lt;/x:foo&gt;
&lt;/x:root&gt;</pre>

<h3>Traversing</h3>

<p>Traversing the object structure can be done in the usual way by using the
list of children. Note however that the child nodes are returned as an
iterator. The Iterator supports the 'OM way' of accessing elements and is
more convenient than a list for sequential access. The following code sample
shows how the children can be accessed. The children are of the type OMNode
that can either be OMText or OMElement.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 7</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">Iterator children = root.getChildren();
While(children.hasNext()){
        OMNode node = (OMNode)children.next();
}</pre>

<p>Apart from this, every OMNode has links to its siblings. If more thorough
navigation is needed the nextSibling() and PreviousSibling() methods can be
used. A more selective set can be chosen by using the
getChildrenWithName(QName) methods. The getChildWithName(Qname) method
returns the first child that matches the given QName and
getChildrenWithName(QName) returns a collection containing all the matching
children. The advantage of these iterators is that they won't build the whole
object structure at once, until its required.</p>
<!-- Special section -->

<p class="special"></p>

<table width="100%">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td><img src="images/OM005.gif" alt="Remember this" width="35"
        height="57"></td>
      <td class="special-td">All iterator implementations internally stay one
        step ahead of their apparent location to provide the correct value
        for the hasNext() method. This hidden advancement can build elements
        that are not intended to be built at all. Hence these iterators are
        recommended only when caching is not a concern.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<!-- End of special section -->

<p>OM can be serialized either as the pure object model or the pull event
stream. The serialization uses a XMLStreamWriter object to write out the
output and hence the same serialization mechanism can be used to write
different types of outputs (such as text, binary, etc.,).</p>

<p>A caching flag is provided by OM to control the building of the in-memory
OM. The OMNode has two methods, serializeWithCache and serialize When
serialize is called the cache flag is reset and the serializer does not cache
the stream. Hence the object model will not be built if the cache flag is not
set.</p>

<p>The serializer serializes namespaces in the following way.</p>
<ol>
  <li>When a namespace that is in the scope but not yet declared is
    encountered, it will then be declared.</li>
  <li>When a namespace that is in scope and already declared is encountered,
    the existing declarations prefix is used.</li>
  <li>When the namespaces are declared explicitly using the elements
    declareNamespace() method, they will be serialized even if those
    namespaces are not used in that scope.</li>
</ol>

<p>Because of this behavior, if a fragment of the XML is serialized, it will
also be <i>namespace qualified</i> with the necessary namespace
declarations.</p>

<p>Here is an example that shows how to write the output to the console, with
reference to the earlier code sample (Code listing 1 ) that created a SOAP
envelope.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 8</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">XMLStreamWriter writer = XMLOutputFactory.newInstance().createXMLStreamWriter(System.out);
//dump the output to console with caching
envelope.serializeWithCache(writer); 
writer.flush();</pre>
<pre class="code"></pre>

<p>The above mentioned features of the serializer forces a correct
serialization even if only a part of the OM tree is serialized. The following
serializations show how the serialization mechanism takes the trouble to
accurately figure out the namespaces. The example is from Code Listing 6
which creates a small OM programmatically. Serialization of the root element
produces the following,</p>
<pre class="xml">&lt;x:root xmlns:x="bar" xmlns:y="bar1"&gt;
 &lt;x:foo&gt;
   &lt;y:yuck&gt;blah&lt;/y:yuck&gt;
 &lt;/x:foo&gt;
&lt;/x:root&gt;</pre>

<p>However serialization of only the foo element produces the following</p>
<pre class="xml">&lt;x:foo xmlns:x="bar"&gt;
&lt;y:yuck xmlns:y="bar1"&gt;blah&lt;/y:yuck&gt;
&lt;/x:foo&gt;</pre>

<p>Note how the serializer puts the relevant namespace declarations in
place.</p>
<b>Complete code for the OM based document building and serialization </b>

<p>The following code segment shows how to use the OM for completely building
a document and then serializing it into text pushing the output to the
console. Only the important sections are shown here. The complete program
listing can be found in the appendix.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 9</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">//create the parser
XMLStreamReader parser = XMLInputFactory.newInstance().createXMLStreamReader(new FileReader(file));
//create the builder
OMXMLParserWrapper builder =   OMXMLBuilderFactory.createStAXSOAPModelBuilder(OMAbstractFactory.getOMFactory(),parser);
//get the root element (in this case the envelope)
SOAPEnvelope envelope = (SOAPEnvelope)builder.getDocumentElement();
//get the writer
XMLStreamWriter writer = XMLOutputFactory.newInstance().createXMLStreamWriter(System.out);
//dump the out put to console with caching
envelope.serialize(writer);
writer.flush();</pre>

<h2>Advanced Operations with OM</h2>

<h3>Use of the OMNavigator for Traversal</h3>

<p>OM provides a utility class to navigate the OM structure. The navigator
provides an in-order traversal of the OM tree up to the last-built node. The
Navigator has two states called the navigable state and the completion state.
Since the navigator provides the navigation starting from an OMElement, it is
deemed to have completed the navigation when the starting node is reached
again. This state is known as the completion state. Once the navigator has
reached the complete status its navigation is done and it cannot proceed.</p>

<p>It is possible that the OM tree does not get built completely when it is
navigated. The navigable status shows whether the tree structure is
navigable. When the navigator is complete it is not navigable anymore.
However it is possible for a navigator to become non-navigable without being
complete. The following code sample shows how the navigator should be used
and handled using its states.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 10</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">//Create a navigator
OMNavigator navigator = new OMNavigator(envelope);
OMNode node = null;
while (navigator.isNavigable()) {
     node = navigator.next();
}</pre>

<h3>Accessing the Pull Parser</h3>

<p>OM is tightly integrated with StAX and the
getXMLStreamReader()/getXMLStreamReaderWithoutCaching() methods in the
OMElement provides a XMLStreamReader object. This XMLStreamReader instance
has a special capability of switching between the underlying stream and the
OM object tree if the cache setting is off. However this functionality is
completely transparent to the user. This is further explained in the
following paragraphs.</p>

<p>OM has the concept of caching, and OM is the actual cache of the events
fired. However the requester can choose to get the pull events from the
underlying stream rather than the OM tree. This can be achieved by getting
the pull parser with the cache off. If the pull parser was obtained without
switching off cache, the new events fired will be cached and the tree
updated. This returned pull parser will switch between the object structure
and the stream underneath and the users need not worry about the differences
caused by the switching. The exact pull stream the original document would
have provided would be produced even if the OM tree was fully/partially
built. The getXMLStreamReaderWithoutCaching() method is very useful when the
events need to be handled in a pull based manner without any intermediate
models. This makes such operations faster and efficient.</p>
<!-- Special section -->

<p class="special"></p>

<table width="100%">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td><img src="images/OM005.gif" alt="Remember this" width="35"
        height="57"></td>
      <td class="special-td">For consistency reasons once the cache is
        switched off it cannot be switched on again.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<!-- End of special section -->

<h3>Known Limitations of OM</h3>

<h3>Inefficient Namespace serialization</h3>

<p>Although the serializer acts correctly in every situation, the code that
it produces may not be efficient all the time. Take the following case where
a similar Code Listing to Code Listing 6 is used, but with two elements
having the same namespace. Note that the newly added items are in bold.</p>

<div align="left">
<p><b>Code Listing 11</b></p>
</div>
<pre class="code">OMFactory factory = OMAbstractFactory.getOMFactory();
OMNamespace ns1 = factory.createOMNamespace("bar","x");
OMElement root = factory.createOMElement("root",ns1);
OMNamespace ns2 = root.declareNamespace("bar1","y");
OMElement elt1 = factory.createOMElement("foo",ns1);
OMElement elt2 = factory.createOMElement("yuck",ns2);
<b>OMElement elt3 = factory.createOMElement("yuck",ns2);</b>
OMText txt1 = factory.createText(elt2,"blah");
<b>OMText txt2 = factory.createText(elt3,"blahblah");
elt3.addchild(txt2);</b>
elt2.addChild(txt1);
elt1.addChild(elt2);
<b>elt1.addChild(elt3);</b>
root.addChild(elt1);</pre>

<p>Serialization of the root element provides the following XML</p>
<pre class="xml">&lt;x:root xmlns:x="bar" xmlns:y="bar1"&gt;
&lt;x:foo&gt;
 &lt;y:yuck&gt;blahblah&lt;/y:yuck&gt;
 &lt;y:yuck&gt;blah&lt;/y:yuck&gt;
&lt;/x:foo&gt;
&lt;/x:root&gt;

</pre>

<p>However if the serialization is carried on the foo element then the
following XML is produced</p>
<pre class="xml">&lt;x:foo xmlns:x="bar" &gt;
 &lt;y:yuck " xmlns:y="bar1"&gt;blahblah&lt;/y:yuck&gt;
 &lt;y:yuck " xmlns:y="bar1"&gt;blah&lt;/y:yuck&gt;
&lt;/x:foo&gt;

</pre>

<p>Note that the same Namespace is serialized twice. This XML is semantically
correct but the same semantics could have been achieved by placing the y
namespace declaration on the parent element. This behavior is due to the
nature of the serialization where it tries to be accurate but not optimal. It
is deliberately kept unchanged since such optimizations slow down the common
case.</p>

<h2>Summary</h2>

<p>This is meant to be a small yet comprehensive introduction to AXIOM. AXIOM
however is a lot more than what is described in this tutorial. Readers are
welcome to explore AXIOM, specially it's capabilities to handle binary
content.</p>

<h2>Appendix</h2>

<h3>Program Listing for complete OM - build and serialize</h3>
<pre class="code">import org.apache.axiom.om.SOAPEnvelope;
import org.apache.axiom.om.OMFactory;
import org.apache.axiom.om.OMXMLParserWrapper;
import org.apache.axis2.impl.llom.factory.OMXMLBuilderFactory;

import javax.xml.stream.*;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

public class TestOMBuilder {

    /**
     * Pass the file name as an argument
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            //create the parser
            XMLStreamReader parser = XMLInputFactory.newInstance().createXMLStreamReader(new FileReader(args[0]));
            //create the builder
            OMXMLParserWrapper builder = OMXMLBuilderFactory.createStAXSOAPModelBuilder(OMAbstractFactory.getOMFactory(), parser);
            //get the root element (in this case the envelope)
            SOAPEnvelope envelope = (SOAPEnvelope) builder.getDocumentElement();
            //get the writer
            XMLStreamWriter writer = XMLOutputFactory.newInstance().createXMLStreamWriter(System.out);
            //dump the out put to console with caching
            envelope.serialize(writer);
writer.flush();

        } catch (XMLStreamException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }


}</pre>

<h3>Links</h3>
For basics in XML
<ul>
  <li><a
    href="http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/newto/index.html">Developerworks
    Introduction to XML</a></li>
  <li><a
    href="http://www.bearcave.com/software/java/xml/xmlpull.html">Introduction
    to Pull parsing</a></li>
</ul>
<!-- Start of footer -->
<hr>

<table width="100%">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td align="center">All rights reserved by Apache Software
      Foundation</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<!-- End of footer -->
</body>
</html>