Changing node name of xml-node with Java

Question

I have following scenario: I have a XML-Document, e.g. like this

Answer 1

Your tag1 is invalid. It doesn't have closing >. Also the attributes should be quoted. It should look like this,

<someRootElement>
<tag1>
    <tag2 
        someKey="someValue"
        someKey2="someValue2"
    />
    <tag3/>
    <tag4
        newKey="newValue"
        newKey2="newValue2"
    />
</tag1>
</someRootElement>

Try with the corrected XML. It should work.

Answer 2

Using Document.renameNode:

NodeList nodes = document.getElementsByTagName("tag1");
for (Node eachNode: nodes) {
  document.renameNode(eachNode, null, "reallyCoolTag");
}

Answer 3

You could use an XSL Transformation (XSLT) for this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  version="1.0">
  <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />
  <xsl:template match="*"> <!-- match anything -->
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:copy-of select="@*" />
      <xsl:apply-templates />
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>
  <xsl:template match="tag1"> <!-- switch the element name -->
    <xsl:element name="reallyCoolTag">
      <xsl:copy-of select="@*" />
      <xsl:apply-templates />
    </xsl:element>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

This can be used with the javax.xml.transform package (Java 1.4 and above):

TransformerFactory transFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = transFactory.newTransformer(new StreamSource(
    new File("RenameTag.xslt")));
transformer
    .transform(new DOMSource(document), new StreamResult(System.out));

See DOMResult if you want a Document as the output.

Answer 4

Just call setName("reallyCoolTag") on the element(s) you want to rename. There is no need to copy the children around; the name attribute of an element is a mutable field.

Answer 5

As you did get the attributes:

NamedNodeMap nnm = nodes.item(i).getAttributes();

and you added these attributes to the new element,

You should get the children of nodes.item(i) and set them in the new node.

You can use for ex.:

neu.addContent(nodes.item(i).getChildren());