Question on Java Application Design

[Aymen Benhmida]

hi guys,

i developed a utility jar which converts a proprietary XML file into an Excel file and vice verse. When i begun the development i was using a version 1.2 of that XML but now i'm told to make it compatible with the version 1.1.
the difference between both version is that one have different spelling for some tag or attributes and have some extra tags that the other don't have(and for which the utility was developed in the first place)
I used the sax parser for reading and DOM for writing data of the XML file.
also used the Jexcel API for Excel file.

Now i have to do some modification which i want it to have as little impact as possible on what we have now.

can anybody advise me on how to handle the desing for this utility to make it as generic as possible and if there's any design patterns which i can implement?

thank you

[Wim Vanni]

I would go for additional XSLT step(s) to go from XML 1.2 to 1.1 or vice versa.

Wim

[Rob Spoor]

For which you can use javax.xml.transform.Transformer:

Source xslt = ... // use StreamSource if you have File or resource
Source xml = ... // likewise
Result output = ... // use StreamResult for a File or OutputStream

TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer(xslt);
transformer.transform(xml, output);