How can I parse xml from url in android?

My solution uses the code from the accepted answer however I found that it wouldn't work without using an AsyncTask

Here is my code, first I retrieve the XML and parse it in a method that uses an AsyncTask

public class RetrieveFeed extends AsyncTask {

URL url;
ArrayList<String> headlines = new ArrayList();
ArrayList<String> links = new ArrayList();
@Override
protected Object doInBackground(Object[] objects) {
    // Initializing instance variables


    try {
        url = new URL("http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml?edition=uk");

        XmlPullParserFactory factory = XmlPullParserFactory.newInstance();
        factory.setNamespaceAware(false);
        XmlPullParser xpp = factory.newPullParser();

        // We will get the XML from an input stream
        xpp.setInput(getInputStream(url), "UTF_8");

        /* We will parse the XML content looking for the "<title>" tag which appears inside the "<item>" tag.
         * However, we should take in consideration that the rss feed name also is enclosed in a "<title>" tag.
         * As we know, every feed begins with these lines: "<channel><title>Feed_Name</title>...."
         * so we should skip the "<title>" tag which is a child of "<channel>" tag,
         * and take in consideration only "<title>" tag which is a child of "<item>"
         *
         * In order to achieve this, we will make use of a boolean variable.
         */
        boolean insideItem = false;

        // Returns the type of current event: START_TAG, END_TAG, etc..
        int eventType = xpp.getEventType();
        while (eventType != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT) {
            if (eventType == XmlPullParser.START_TAG) {

                if (xpp.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("item")) {
                    insideItem = true;
                } else if (xpp.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("title")) {
                    if (insideItem)
                        headlines.add(xpp.nextText()); //extract the headline
                } else if (xpp.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("link")) {
                    if (insideItem)
                        links.add(xpp.nextText()); //extract the link of article
                }
            } else if (eventType == XmlPullParser.END_TAG && xpp.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("item")) {
                insideItem = false;
            }

            eventType = xpp.next(); //move to next element
        }

    } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (XmlPullParserException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

return headlines;
}


    public InputStream getInputStream(URL url) {
        try {
            return url.openConnection().getInputStream();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            return null;
        }
    }

public ArrayList<String> heads()
{
    return headlines;
}
}

Then in the main activity:

public class MainActivity extends ListActivity {

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);


    ArrayList<String> headlines = new ArrayList<>();

    RetrieveFeed getXML = new RetrieveFeed();
    getXML.execute();
    headlines = getXML.heads();


    // Binding data
    ArrayAdapter adapter = new ArrayAdapter(this,
            android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, headlines);

    setListAdapter(adapter);

}
}

Make sure you have the correct uses permission in your manifest, put it inside the application tag but outside of any activity tags

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"/>

and finally when extending ListActivity you ned to make sure you have a ListView in your main layout xml with the id:

android:id="@android:id/list"

use this code .

public class XMLResourceDemo extends ListActivity {

private final static String TAG = XMLResourceDemo.class.getSimpleName();
TextView selection;
ArrayList<String> items = new ArrayList<String>();

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
    super.onCreate(icicle);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);
    selection = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.selection);

    try {
        XmlPullParserFactory factory = XmlPullParserFactory.newInstance();       
        factory.setNamespaceAware(true);
        XmlPullParser xpp = factory.newPullParser(); 
        xpp.setInput(new InputStreamReader(
            getUrlData("url")));

        while (xpp.getEventType() != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT) {
            Log.i(TAG, "doc started");
            if (xpp.getEventType() == XmlPullParser.START_TAG) {
                if (xpp.getName().equals("entry")) {
                    items.add(xpp.getAttributeValue(0));
                }
            }
            xpp.next();
        }
    } catch (Throwable t) {
        Toast.makeText(this, "Request failed: " + t.toString(),
                Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
    }

    setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter<String>(this,android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, items));
}

public InputStream getUrlData(String url) throws URISyntaxException, ClientProtocolException, IOException {

    DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpGet method = new HttpGet(new URI(url));
    HttpResponse res = client.execute(method);
    return res.getEntity().getContent();
}