populating an xml from user defined values in java

Question

My requirement is that I have a number of XML templates and depending on certain decision params, I have to populate it either with values given by user or from a property file. The XMLs are quite long and nested. I understand any of the following approaches need to be taken for the solution:

1). First unmarshall the xml into a java object >> populate the object from user/property file >> again marshall the resulting object to get the final xml. 2). search for the pattern of tags and replace it with the given values.

I believe former approach is better since it Object oriented and less errorneous, though it will be a big task to populate each and every instance variable of the object.

Also that the latter may result in a cumbersome code as well as lots of errors as pattern may be different : for e.g.,

 > <maven></maven>

 or <maven />.

My question is, is there any other promising and faster approach that can be taken to achieve this?

Any help will be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

You might use xpath for extracting xml tags.

How to read XML using XPath in Java

Also it should be tried to see if it is faster.