Reading XML properties can be easily done using the java.util.Properties.loadFromXML() method. Just like reading the properties from a file that contains a key=value pairs, the XML file will also contain a key and value wrapped in the following XML format.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd">
<properties>
    <comment>Application Configuration</comment>
    <entry key="data.folder">D:\AppData</entry>
    <entry key="jdbc.url">jdbc:mysql://localhost/kodejava</entry>
</properties>

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.Properties;

public class LoadXmlProperties {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LoadXmlProperties demo = new LoadXmlProperties();
        try {
            Properties properties = demo.readProperties();

            //Display all properties information
            properties.list(System.out);

            // Read the value of data.folder and jdbc.url configuration
            String dataFolder = properties.getProperty("data.folder");
            System.out.println("data.folder = " + dataFolder);
            String jdbcUrl = properties.getProperty("jdbc.url");
            System.out.println("jdbc.url    = " + jdbcUrl);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    private Properties readProperties() throws Exception {
        Properties properties = new Properties();
        properties.loadFromXML(getClass().getResourceAsStream("/configuration.xml"));
        return properties;
    }
}

The result of the code snippet above:

-- listing properties --
data.folder=D:\AppData
jdbc.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/kodejava
data.folder = D:\AppData
jdbc.url    = jdbc:mysql://localhost/kodejava