Creating an HTMLDocument from a String of HTML (in Java)

I'm working on a method that takes a String of HTML and returns an analogous

 javax.swing.text.html.HTMLDocument

What is the most efficient way of doing this?

The way I'm currently doing this is to use a SAX parser to parse the HTML string. I keep track of when I hit open tags (for example, <i>). When I hit the corresponding close tag (for example, </i>), I apply the italics style to the characters I've hit in between.

This certainly works, but it's not fast enough. Is there a faster way of doing this?

Agree with mouser but a small correction

Reader stringReader = new StringReader(string);
HTMLEditorKit htmlKit = new HTMLEditorKit();
HTMLDocument htmlDoc = (HTMLDocument) htmlKit.createDefaultDocument();
htmlKit.read(stringReader, htmlDoc, 0);

Try to use HtmlEditorKit class. It supports parsing of HTML content that can be read directly from String (e.g. through StringReader). There seems to be an article about how to do this.

Edit: To give an example, basically I think it could be done like this (aftrer the code is executed, htmlDoc should contain the loaded document...):

Reader stringReader = new StringReader(string);
HTMLEditorKit htmlKit = new HTMLEditorKit();
HTMLDocument htmlDoc = (HTMLDocument) htmlKit.createDefaultDocument();
HTMLEditorKit.Parser parser = new ParserDelegator();
parser.parse(stringReader, htmlDoc.getReader(0), true);

You could try to use the HTMLDocument.setOuterHTML method. Simply add a random element and replace it afterwards with your HTML string.