What are the relative advantages of XMLEncoder and XStream?

Question

Suppose I want to store many small configuration objects in XML, and I don\'t care too much about the format. The XMLDecoder class built into the JDK would work, and from what I

Answer 1

Another suggestion: consider using JAXB (http://jaxb.dev.java.net). If you are using JDK 1.6, it comes bundled, check out "javax.xml.bind" for details, so no need for additional external jars.

JAXB is rather fast. I like XStream too, but it's bit slower. Also, XMLEncoder is bit of a toy (compared to other options)... but if it works, there's no harm in using it.

Also: one benefit of JAXB is that you can also bind partial document (sub-trees) with it; no need to create object(s) for the whole file. For this you need to use Stax (XMLStreamReader) to point to root element of the sub-tree, then bind. No need to use SAX, even for most large files, as long as it can be processed chunk by chunk.