How to update xml files in java

Question

I have a xml file call data.xml like the code below. The project can run from client side no problem and it can read the xml file. The problem I have now is I I want to writ

Answer 1

Firstly there is an error in your XML you have extra <data> tag . I have removed it. Now you have two options you could either use SAX or DOM. I would suggest DOM reason being that you can read full XML using DOM and for a small piece of XML like this it's better choice.

Code

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
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;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

public class ModifyXMLFile {

    public static void main(String argv[]) {

        try {
            String filepath = "file.xml";
            DocumentBuilderFactory docFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory
                    .newInstance();
            DocumentBuilder docBuilder = docFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
            Document doc = docBuilder.parse(filepath);

            // Get the root element
            Node data= doc.getFirstChild();

            Node startdate = doc.getElementsByTagName("startdate").item(0);

            // I am not doing any thing with it just for showing you
            String currentStartdate = startdate.getNodeValue();

            DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
            Date today = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();

            startdate.setTextContent(df.format(today));

            // write the content into xml file
            TransformerFactory transformerFactory = TransformerFactory
                    .newInstance();
            Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();
            DOMSource source = new DOMSource(doc);
            StreamResult result = new StreamResult(new File(filepath));
            transformer.transform(source, result);

            System.out.println("Done");

        } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (TransformerException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (SAXException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Corrected XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data>
   <username>admin</username>
   <password>12345</password>
   <interval>1</interval>
   <timeout>90</timeout>
   <startdate>29/07/2015</startdate>
   <enddate>06/01/2013</enddate>
   <ttime>1110</ttime>
</data>

Answer 2

Underscore-java library can read xml to the linked hash map and regenerate xml after modification. I am the maintainer of the project. Live example

import com.github.underscore.lodash.U;

public class MyClass {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        String xml = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"no\"?>"
        + "<data>"
        + "       <username>admin</username>"
        + "       <password>12345</password>"
        + "       <interval>1</interval>"
        + "       <timeout>90</timeout>"
        + "       <startdate>01/01/2013</startdate>"
        + "       <enddate>06/01/2013</enddate>"
        + "       <ttime>1110</ttime>"
        + "    </data>";  
        java.util.Map<String, Object> object = U.fromXmlMap(xml);
        U.set(object, "data.startdate", "02/02/2013");
        U.set(object, "data.enddate", "07/02/2013");
        System.out.println(U.toXml(object)); 
    }
}

// <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
// <data>
//   <username>admin</username>
//   <password>12345</password>
//   <interval>1</interval>
//   <timeout>90</timeout>
//   <startdate>02/02/2013</startdate>
//   <enddate>07/02/2013</enddate>
//   <ttime>1110</ttime>
// </data>

Answer 3

This an example which i have tried for updating the xml files.

        String filepath="Test.xml";
        DocumentBuilderFactory docFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder docBuilder;
        docBuilder = docFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document doc = docBuilder.parse(filepath);
        Node company = doc.getFirstChild();

        /**
         * Get the param from xml and set value
         */
        Node search = doc.getElementsByTagName("parameter").item(0);
        NamedNodeMap attr = search.getAttributes();
        Node nodeAttr = attr.getNamedItem("value");
        nodeAttr.setTextContent(param);

        /**
         * write it back to the xml
         */
        TransformerFactory transformerFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();
        DOMSource source = new DOMSource(doc);
        StreamResult result = new StreamResult(new File(filepath));
        transformer.transform(source, result);

        System.out.println("Done");

Following is the XML file i have used:

<!DOCTYPE suite SYSTEM "http://testng.org/testng-1.0.dtd">
   <suite name="Testing" parallel="false">
    <parameter name="Search" value="param1"></parameter>
     <test name="TestParams" preserve-order="true">
       <classes>
         <class name="uiscreen.TestingParam"/>
       </classes>
     </test> <!-- Test -->
   </suite> <!-- Suite -->

Hope it helps!

Answer 4

Start by loading the XML file...

DocumentBuilderFactory f = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder b = f.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = b.parse(new File("Data.xml"));

Now, there are a few ways to do this, but simply, you can use the xpath API to find the nodes you want and update their content

XPath xPath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
Node startDateNode = (Node) xPath.compile("/data/startdate").evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODE);
startDateNode.setTextContent("29/07/2015");

xPath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
Node endDateNode = (Node) xPath.compile("/data/enddate").evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODE);
endDateNode.setTextContent("29/07/2015");

Then save the Document back to the file...

Transformer tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
tf.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
tf.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.METHOD, "xml");
tf.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "4");

DOMSource domSource = new DOMSource(doc);
StreamResult sr = new StreamResult(new File("Data.xml"));
tf.transform(domSource, sr);