The SAXSource class allows the setting of an XMLReader to be used for pulling parse events, and an InputSource that may be used to specify the SAX source.

The SAXResult class allows the setting of a ContentHandler to be the receiver of SAX2 events from the transformation.

The SAXTransformerFactory extends TransformerFactory to provide factory methods for creating TemplatesHandler, TransformerHandler, and XMLReader instances.

To obtain a SAXTransformerFactory, the caller must cast the TransformerFactory instance returned from TransformerFactory.newInstance().

The TransformerHandler interface allows a transformation to be created from SAX2 parse events, which is a "push" model rather than the "pull" model that normally occurs for a transformation. Normal parse events are received through the ContentHandler interface, lexical events such as startCDATA and endCDATA are received through the LexicalHandler interface, and events that signal the start or end of disabling output escaping are received via ContentHandler.processingInstruction(java.lang.String, java.lang.String), with the target parameter being Result.PI_DISABLE_OUTPUT_ESCAPING and Result.PI_ENABLE_OUTPUT_ESCAPING. If parameters, output properties, or other features need to be set on the Transformer handler, a Transformer reference will need to be obtained from TransformerHandler.getTransformer(), and the methods invoked from that reference.

The TemplatesHandler interface allows the creation of Templates objects from SAX2 parse events. Once the ContentHandler events are complete, the Templates object may be obtained from TemplatesHandler.getTemplates(). Note that TemplatesHandler.setSystemId(java.lang.String) should normally be called in order to establish a base system ID from which relative URLs may be resolved.

The SAXTransformerFactory.newXMLFilter(javax.xml.transform.Source) method allows the creation of a XMLFilter, which encapsulates the SAX2 notion of a "pull" transformation. The resulting XMLFilters can be chained together so that a series of transformations can happen with one's output becoming another's input.