XML Node to String in Java

Question

I came across this piece of Java function to convert an XML node to a Java String representation:

private String nodeToString(Node node) {
StringWriter sw =          


        

Answer 1

All important has already been said. I tried to compile the following code.

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.StringWriter;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.OutputKeys;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;

import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;

public class Test {

  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

    String s = 
      "<p>" +
      "  <media type=\"audio\" id=\"au008093\" rights=\"wbowned\">" +
      "    <title>Bee buzz</title>" +
      "  " +
      "  Most other kinds of bees live alone instead of in a colony." +
      "  These bees make tunnels in wood or in the ground." +
      "  The queen makes her own nest." +
      "</p>";
    InputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream(s.getBytes());

    DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
    Document d = db.parse(is);

    Node rootElement = d.getDocumentElement();
    System.out.println(nodeToString(rootElement));

  }

  private static String nodeToString(Node node) {
    StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
    try {
      Transformer t = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
      t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
      t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
      t.transform(new DOMSource(node), new StreamResult(sw));
    } catch (TransformerException te) {
      System.out.println("nodeToString Transformer Exception");
    }
    return sw.toString();
  }

}

And it produced the following output:

<p>  <media id="au008093" rights="wbowned" type="audio">    <title>Bee buzz</title>  </media>  Most other kinds of bees live alone instead of in a colony.  These bees make tunnels in wood or in the ground.  The queen makes her own nest.</p>

You can further tweak it by yourself. Good luck!

Answer 2

You have an XML respesentation in a DOM tree.
For example you have opened an XML file and you have passed it in the DOM parser.
As a result a DOM tree in memory with your XML is created.
Now you can only access the XML info via traversal of the DOM tree.
If you need though, a String representation of the XML info of the DOM tree you use a transformation.
This happens since it is not possible to get the String representation directly from a DOM tree.
So if for example as Node node you pass in nodeToString is the root element of the XML doc then the result is a String containing the original XML data.
The tags will still be there. I.e. you will have a valid XML representation. Only this time will be in a String variable.

For example:

  DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
  DocumentBuilder parser = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
  Document xmlDoc = parser.parse(file);//file has the xml
  String xml = nodeToString(xmlDoc.getDocumentElement());//pass in the root
  //xml has the xml info. E.g no xml declaration. Add it
  xml = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" ?> + xml;//bad to append this way...
  System.out.println("XML is:"+xml);

DISCLAIMER: Did not even attempt to compile code. Hopefully you understand what you have to do