Method, system, and program for interfacing with elements in a document

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS In the following description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings which form a part hereof and which illustrate several embodiments of the present invention.
It is understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural and operational changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention.
FIG.
2 illustrates the program elements in which preferred embodiments are implemented.
A computer system 2, which may comprise any computer system known in the art including volatile and non-volatile memory areas, includes an XML document 4, user defined mapping 6, transformer 8, and a program interface 10.
The program interface 10 provides a specification of methods that are implemented for elements specified in the user defined mapping 6.
The transformer 8 reads in the contents of the XML document 4, which includes a hierarchical arrangement of elements, and a user defined mapping 6 which maps the elements to methods that have a specific name or type for the element.
The user defined mapping 6 provides interface mapping for the elements defined in the XML document 4, such as property data type, property naming, etc.
In preferred embodiments, the program interface 10 is comprised of an object oriented class for each element and methods and interfaces to use to access and modify the classes of elements using the names provided by the user defined mapping 6.
In preferred embodiments, an object oriented programming language, such as Java, is used to implement the class and methods in the class.
** The methods for the class may be defined by an interface.
A class implements an interface by implementing all the methods contained in the interface.
The transformer 8 produces an interface/class for each of the elements defined in the XML document 4.
The transformer program 8 produces a JAR file including all the interfaces, classes, icons of the objects generated for the elements in the XML document 4.
In preferred embodiments, the transformer 8 may be implemented as a JAVA Bean