XML Code:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<company>
    <staff id="1001">
        <firstname>yong</firstname>
        <lastname>mook kim</lastname>
        <nickname>mkyong</nickname>
        <salary>100000</salary>
    </staff>
    <staff id="2001">
        <firstname>low</firstname>
        <lastname>yin fong</lastname>
        <nickname>fong fong</nickname>
        <salary>200000</salary>
    </staff>
</company>

Java Code:

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import java.io.File;

public class ReadXMLFile {

  public static void main(String argv[]) {
    try {
    File fXmlFile = new File("/Users/mkyong/staff.xml");
    DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
    Document doc = dBuilder.parse(fXmlFile);
    doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();

    System.out.println("Root element :" + doc.getDocumentElement().getNodeName());
    NodeList nList = doc.getElementsByTagName("staff");
    System.out.println("----------------------------");

    for (int temp = 0; temp < nList.getLength(); temp++) {
        Node nNode = nList.item(temp);
        System.out.println("\nCurrent Element :" + nNode.getNodeName());
        if (nNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
            Element eElement = (Element) nNode;
            System.out.println("Staff id : "
                               + eElement.getAttribute("id"));
            System.out.println("First Name : "
                               + eElement.getElementsByTagName("firstname")
                                 .item(0).getTextContent());
            System.out.println("Last Name : "
                               + eElement.getElementsByTagName("lastname")
                                 .item(0).getTextContent());
            System.out.println("Nick Name : "
                               + eElement.getElementsByTagName("nickname")
                                 .item(0).getTextContent());
            System.out.println("Salary : "
                               + eElement.getElementsByTagName("salary")
                                 .item(0).getTextContent());
        }
    }
    } catch (Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
}

Output:

----------------

Root element :company
----------------------------

Current Element :staff
Staff id : 1001
First Name : yong
Last Name : mook kim
Nick Name : mkyong
Salary : 100000

Current Element :staff
Staff id : 2001
First Name : low
Last Name : yin fong
Nick Name : fong fong
Salary : 200000

I recommended you reading this: Normalization in DOM parsing with java - how does it work?

Example source.

I would recommend the Commons Configuration library: http://commons.apache.org/configuration/index.html Take a look at the HOWTOs to see how easy it is to get some information from an XML file.

All other libs I know involve either operating on the DOM directly or registering handlers for SAX parsing (which both involve a high overhead of code). JAXB is also an alternative but doesn't involve less overhead code than the former two.

Max

Reading xml the easy way:

http://www.mkyong.com/java/jaxb-hello-world-example/

package com.mkyong.core;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAttribute;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement
public class Customer {

    String name;
    int age;
    int id;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    @XmlElement
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }

    @XmlElement
    public void setAge(int age) {
        this.age = age;
    }

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    @XmlAttribute
    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

} 

.

package com.mkyong.core;

import java.io.File;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBException;
import javax.xml.bind.Marshaller;

public class JAXBExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

      Customer customer = new Customer();
      customer.setId(100);
      customer.setName("mkyong");
      customer.setAge(29);

      try {

        File file = new File("C:\\file.xml");
        JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(Customer.class);
        Marshaller jaxbMarshaller = jaxbContext.createMarshaller();

        // output pretty printed
        jaxbMarshaller.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, true);

        jaxbMarshaller.marshal(customer, file);
        jaxbMarshaller.marshal(customer, System.out);

          } catch (JAXBException e) {
              e.printStackTrace();
          }

    }
}

Writing XML using JAXB (Java Architecture for XML Binding):

http://www.mkyong.com/java/jaxb-hello-world-example/

package com.mkyong.core;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAttribute;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement
public class Customer {

    String name;
    int age;
    int id;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    @XmlElement
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }

    @XmlElement
    public void setAge(int age) {
        this.age = age;
    }

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    @XmlAttribute
    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

} 

package com.mkyong.core;

import java.io.File;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBException;
import javax.xml.bind.Marshaller;

public class JAXBExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

      Customer customer = new Customer();
      customer.setId(100);
      customer.setName("mkyong");
      customer.setAge(29);

      try {

        File file = new File("C:\\file.xml");
        JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(Customer.class);
        Marshaller jaxbMarshaller = jaxbContext.createMarshaller();

        // output pretty printed
        jaxbMarshaller.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, true);

        jaxbMarshaller.marshal(customer, file);
        jaxbMarshaller.marshal(customer, System.out);

          } catch (JAXBException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
          }

    }
}

Since you want to parse config files, I think commons-configuration would be the best solution.

Commons Configuration provides a generic configuration interface which enables a Java application to read configuration data from a variety of sources (including XML)