JDOM 1.0 is out

We’ve long used the open-source 
 JDOM package to work with XML in Java. JDOM is 
 not an implementation of the DOM specification,
 as it may seem. It offers its own API, which from a programming standpoint
 is much more flexible than the overly loose DOM.

After four years, JDOM has become a very popular tool among many developers working with XML. Its success, or its popularity, depending on how you look at it,
 is reflected in the creation of a Java Specification Request (JSR), JSR 102: JDOM 1.0.

Last Thursday (9 September 2004), lead developer Jason Hunter announced the
release of version 1.0. Don’t be thrown by the somewhat odd version numbering. Version 1.0 really is newer than JDOM 9. Future versions should follow the usual numbering, 1.1, 2.0, and so on.

JDOM works with traditional APIs such as SAX and DOM. It also has lots of other features. Reading through the change log, I came across XPath support, for instance. JDOM’s authors did everything they could to make working with XML as pleasant as possible. Earlier, the unstructured pace of development had the unfortunate effect of causing constant API changes, right up to and including version 1.0.

JDOM 1.0 isn’t backward compatible with JDOM 9 (I haven’t tested version 10). The developers do promise, though, that future API changes will be backward compatible.

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