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Java XML Parsing Issue with JAXP: SAXParser Not Handling Large Files Efficiently

๐Ÿ‘€ Views: 29 ๐Ÿ’ฌ Answers: 1 ๐Ÿ“… Created: 2025-08-22
xml java sax Java

I've spent hours debugging this and I've tried everything I can think of but I'm stuck trying to I tried several approaches but none seem to work. I'm currently facing an issue while parsing a large XML file (around 200 MB) using the SAXParser in Java. The XML file is structured with nested elements, and I expect the parsing to be efficient without running into memory issues. When I run the parser, I receive an error that states `java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space`. I've already tried increasing the JVM heap size with `-Xmx2g`, but it still crashes halfway through the parsing process. Hereโ€™s a simplified version of my SAX handler: ```java import org.xml.sax.Attributes; import org.xml.sax.SAXException; import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler; public class MyHandler extends DefaultHandler { @Override public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes attributes) throws SAXException { // Process start of element } @Override public void characters(char[] ch, int start, int length) throws SAXException { // Handle the character data } @Override public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName) throws SAXException { // Process end of element } } ``` And hereโ€™s how Iโ€™m initiating the parser: ```java import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser; import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory; public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { try { SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance(); SAXParser saxParser = factory.newSAXParser(); MyHandler handler = new MyHandler(); saxParser.parse("path/to/largefile.xml", handler); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } ``` I suspect that my handler might be holding onto too much data at once, but I'm unsure how to optimize it for such large files. I've already ensured that Iโ€™m not accidentally retaining references to any large objects within the handler. Are there any best practices or design patterns I should consider when working with large XML files in Java? Any help would be greatly appreciated! This is part of a larger application I'm building. What am I doing wrong? How would you solve this? Any pointers in the right direction? I'm on CentOS using the latest version of Java. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this.