How to I output org.w3c.dom.Element to string format in java?

Question

I have an org.w3c.dom.Element object passed into my method. I need to see the whole xml string including its child nodes (the whole object graph). I am looking

Answer 1

this is what i s done in jcabi:

private String asString(Node node) {
    StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
    try {
        Transformer trans = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
        // @checkstyle MultipleStringLiterals (1 line)
        trans.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
        trans.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.VERSION, "1.0");
        if (!(node instanceof Document)) {
            trans.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
        }
        trans.transform(new DOMSource(node), new StreamResult(writer));
    } catch (final TransformerConfigurationException ex) {
        throw new IllegalStateException(ex);
    } catch (final TransformerException ex) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException(ex);
    }
    return writer.toString();
}

and it works for me!

Answer 2

Try jcabi-xml with one liner:

String xml = new XMLDocument(element).toString();

Answer 3

Assuming you want to stick with the standard API...

You could use a DOMImplementationLS:

Document document = node.getOwnerDocument();
DOMImplementationLS domImplLS = (DOMImplementationLS) document
    .getImplementation();
LSSerializer serializer = domImplLS.createLSSerializer();
String str = serializer.writeToString(node);

If the <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?> declaration bothers you, you could use a transformer instead:

TransformerFactory transFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = transFactory.newTransformer();
StringWriter buffer = new StringWriter();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
transformer.transform(new DOMSource(node),
      new StreamResult(buffer));
String str = buffer.toString();

Answer 4

With VTD-XML, you can pass into the cursor and make a single getElementFragment call to retrieve the segment (as denoted by its offset and length)... Below is an example

import com.ximpleware.*;
public class concatTest{
    public static void main(String s1[]) throws Exception {
        VTDGen vg= new VTDGen();
        String s = "<users><user><firstName>some </firstName><lastName> one</lastName></user></users>";
        vg.setDoc(s.getBytes());
        vg.parse(false);
        VTDNav vn = vg.getNav();
        AutoPilot ap = new AutoPilot(vn);
        ap.selectXPath("/users/user/firstName");
        int i=ap.evalXPath();
        if (i!=1){
            long l= vn.getElementFragment();
            System.out.println(" the segment is "+ vn.toString((int)l,(int)(l>>32)));
        }
    }

}

Answer 5

If you have the schema of the XML or can otherwise create JAXB bindings for it, you could use the JAXB Marshaller to write to System.out:

import javax.xml.bind.*;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.*;
import javax.xml.namespace.QName;

@XmlRootElement
public class BoundClass {

    @XmlAttribute
    private String test;

    @XmlElement
    private int x;

    public BoundClass() {}

    public BoundClass(String test) {
        this.test = test;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        JAXBContext jxbc = JAXBContext.newInstance(BoundClass.class);
        Marshaller marshaller = jxbc.createMarshaller();
        marshaller.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FRAGMENT, true);
        marshaller.marshal(new JAXBElement(new QName("root"),BoundClass.class,new Main("test")),System.out);
    }
}

Answer 6

Not supported in the standard JAXP API, I used the JDom library for this purpose. It has a printer function, formatter options etc. http://www.jdom.org/