about SAX

This is the official website for SAX. It replaces David Megginson's original SAX page.

SAX is the Simple API for XML, originally a Java-only API. SAX was the first widely adopted API for XML in Java, and is a “de facto” standard. The current version is SAX 2.0.1, and there are versions for several programming language environments other than Java.

SAX has recently switched over to the SourceForge project infrastructure. The intent is to continue the open development and maintainence process for SAX (no NDAs required) while making it easier to track open SAX issues outside of the high-volume xml-dev list. Project resources include archived mailing lists and a download area. See the Project Page link for full information about project facilities which are being used, as well as news announcements. Use the sax-users@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list to discuss problems that come up when you're trying to use SAX.

David Megginson, who runs an XML consulting company, has resumed maintaining SAX after a period of excellent work by David Brownell (if you use SAX, you should think about buying David Brownell's SAX2 book).

27-April 2004: SAX 2.0.2 (sax2 r3) is out. Download it by going to the Sourceforge download area. That download includes full source, pre-generated javadoc, and a JAR file you can install.

29-January 2002: SAX 2.0.1 (sax2 r2) is out! Download it by going to the Sourceforge download area. That download includes full source, pre-generated javadoc, and a JAR file you can install. Or, consult the javadoc link at left. That's current, and includes the preliminary "SAX2 Extensions 1.1" APIs.

12-November 2001: There are some SAX2 conformance tests available, using the JUNIT testing framework. Download the "sax2unit" tests at the xmlconf project. These are in addition to the SAX2-hosted XML conformance tests mentioned on the "links" page, and address different issues.