title: Stop parsing sax and return List
body: <p>i am parsing a big xml document with sax parser, what i want to do is to stop parsing when a specific element is found and return an ArrayList which i was filling when i was parsing my file.
  Hwo to do ?</p>
  
  <p>i have tried to create an exception but i couldn't return the list i was filling
  is there any other solution for my problem ?</p>
  
  <p>here is my function </p>
  
  <pre><code>public List&lt;String&gt; parse(String id) throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException, ClassNotFoundException
  {
  
      List&lt;String&gt; list_Lat_Lon = new ArrayList&lt;String&gt;();
  
      //****************************************************************************************************
  
      try{
  
  
      SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
      factory.setValidating(true); //--- or false
      SAXParser saxParser = factory.newSAXParser();
  
  
      DefaultHandler content_handler;
      content_handler = new DefaultHandler() {
  
  
  
      @Override
      public void startDocument() throws SAXException {
  
      }  
  
         @Override
     public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes attributes)throws SAXException
     {
         if(qName.equals("node")){
  
             if(attributes.getValue("id").equals(id)){
                 String lat = attributes.getValue("lat");
                 String lon = attributes.getValue("lon");
  
                 list_Lat_Lon.add(lat);
                 list_Lat_Lon.add(lon); // filling my List
  
  
             }
         }
         if(qName.equals("way")){
            **// here i want to break my parsing and return my List**
         }
  
     }
  
  
         @Override
     public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName)throws SAXException
     {
  
  
  
     }
  
         @Override
     public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length)throws SAXException
     {
  
     }
  
         @Override
      public void endDocument() throws SAXException {
  
  
      }
  
  
  
  };
     saxParser.parse("src/ParsingOSM/algeria-latest.osm", content_handler); 
      }catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
           System.out.println(e.toString());      
          }
  
     return list_Lat_Lon; 
  }
  </code></pre>