[java] Java - Reading XML file

I am trying to read in some data from an XML file and having some trouble, the XML I have is as follows:

<xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<EmailSettings>
    <recipient>[email protected]</recipient>
    <sender>[email protected]</sender>
    <subject>Sales Query</subject>
    <description>email body message</description>
</EmailSettings>

I am trying to read these values as strings into my Java program, I have written this code so far:

private static Document getDocument (String filename){
    try {

        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();

        factory.setIgnoringComments(true);
        factory.setIgnoringElementContentWhitespace(true);
        factory.setValidating(false);

        DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
        return builder.parse(new InputSource(filename));        
    }
    catch (Exception e){
        System.out.println("Error reading configuration file:");
        System.out.println(e.getMessage());
    }
    return null;
}

Document doc = getDocument(configFileName);

Element config = doc.getDocumentElement();

I am struggling with reading in the actual string values though.

This question is related to java xml

The answer is


If using another library is an option, the following may be easier:

package for_so;

import java.io.File;

import rasmus_torkel.xml_basic.read.TagNode;
import rasmus_torkel.xml_basic.read.XmlReadOptions;
import rasmus_torkel.xml_basic.read.impl.XmlReader;

public class Q7704827_SimpleRead
{
    public static void
    main(String[] args)
    {
        String fileName = args[0];

        TagNode emailNode = XmlReader.xmlFileToRoot(new File(fileName), "EmailSettings", XmlReadOptions.DEFAULT);
        String recipient = emailNode.nextTextFieldE("recipient");
        String sender = emailNode.nextTextFieldE("sender");
        String subject = emailNode.nextTextFieldE("subject");
        String description = emailNode.nextTextFieldE("description");
        emailNode.verifyNoMoreChildren();

        System.out.println("recipient =  " + recipient);
        System.out.println("sender =     " + sender);
        System.out.println("subject =    " + subject);
        System.out.println("desciption = " + description);
    }
}

The library and its documentation are at rasmustorkel.com


Reading xml the easy way:

http://www.mkyong.com/java/jaxb-hello-world-example/

package com.mkyong.core;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAttribute;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement
public class Customer {

    String name;
    int age;
    int id;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    @XmlElement
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }

    @XmlElement
    public void setAge(int age) {
        this.age = age;
    }

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    @XmlAttribute
    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

} 

.

package com.mkyong.core;

import java.io.File;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBException;
import javax.xml.bind.Marshaller;

public class JAXBExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

      Customer customer = new Customer();
      customer.setId(100);
      customer.setName("mkyong");
      customer.setAge(29);

      try {

        File file = new File("C:\\file.xml");
        JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext.newInstance(Customer.class);
        Marshaller jaxbMarshaller = jaxbContext.createMarshaller();

        // output pretty printed
        jaxbMarshaller.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, true);

        jaxbMarshaller.marshal(customer, file);
        jaxbMarshaller.marshal(customer, System.out);

          } catch (JAXBException e) {
              e.printStackTrace();
          }

    }
}

Avoid hardcoding try making the code that is dynamic below is the code it will work for any xml I have used SAX Parser you can use dom,xpath it's upto you I am storing all the tags name and values in the map after that it becomes easy to retrieve any values you want I hope this helps
SAMPLE XML:

<parent>
<child >
    <child1> value 1 </child1>
    <child2> value 2 </child2>
    <child3> value 3 </child3>
    </child>
    <child >
     <child4> value 4 </child4>
    <child5> value 5</child5>
    <child6> value 6 </child6>
    </child>
  </parent>

JAVA CODE:

 import java.io.File;
    import java.io.IOException;
    import java.util.HashMap;
    import java.util.LinkedHashMap;
    import java.util.Map;
    import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
    import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;
    import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
    import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
    import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
    import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;


    public class saxParser {
           static Map<String,String> tmpAtrb=null;
           static Map<String,String> xmlVal= new LinkedHashMap<String, String>();
        public static void main(String[] args) throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException, VerifyError {

            /**
             * We can pass the class name of the XML parser
             * to the SAXParserFactory.newInstance().
             */

            //SAXParserFactory saxDoc = SAXParserFactory.newInstance("com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserFactoryImpl", null);

            SAXParserFactory saxDoc = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
            SAXParser saxParser = saxDoc.newSAXParser();

            DefaultHandler handler = new DefaultHandler() {
                String tmpElementName = null;
                String tmpElementValue = null;


                @Override
                public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, 
                                                                    Attributes attributes) throws SAXException {
                    tmpElementValue = "";
                    tmpElementName = qName;
                    tmpAtrb=new HashMap();
                    //System.out.println("Start Element :" + qName);
                    /**
                     * Store attributes in HashMap
                     */
                    for (int i=0; i<attributes.getLength(); i++) {
                        String aname = attributes.getLocalName(i);
                        String value = attributes.getValue(i);
                        tmpAtrb.put(aname, value);
                    }

                }

                @Override
                public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName) 
                                                            throws SAXException { 

                    if(tmpElementName.equals(qName)){
                        System.out.println("Element Name :"+tmpElementName);
                    /**
                     * Retrive attributes from HashMap
                     */                    for (Map.Entry<String, String> entrySet : tmpAtrb.entrySet()) {
                            System.out.println("Attribute Name :"+ entrySet.getKey() + "Attribute Value :"+ entrySet.getValue());
                        }
                        System.out.println("Element Value :"+tmpElementValue);
                        xmlVal.put(tmpElementName, tmpElementValue);
                        System.out.println(xmlVal);
                      //Fetching The Values From The Map
                        String getKeyValues=xmlVal.get(tmpElementName);
                        System.out.println("XmlTag:"+tmpElementName+":::::"+"ValueFetchedFromTheMap:"+getKeyValues);   
                    }   
                }
                @Override
                public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length) throws SAXException {
                    tmpElementValue = new String(ch, start, length) ;  
                } 
            };
            /**
             * Below two line used if we use SAX 2.0
             * Then last line not needed.
             */

            //saxParser.setContentHandler(handler);
            //saxParser.parse(new InputSource("c:/file.xml"));
            saxParser.parse(new File("D:/Test _ XML/file.xml"), handler);
        }  
    }

OUTPUT:

Element Name :child1
Element Value : value 1 
XmlTag:<child1>:::::ValueFetchedFromTheMap: value 1 
Element Name :child2
Element Value : value 2 
XmlTag:<child2>:::::ValueFetchedFromTheMap: value 2 
Element Name :child3
Element Value : value 3 
XmlTag:<child3>:::::ValueFetchedFromTheMap: value 3 
Element Name :child4
Element Value : value 4 
XmlTag:<child4>:::::ValueFetchedFromTheMap: value 4 
Element Name :child5
Element Value : value 5
XmlTag:<child5>:::::ValueFetchedFromTheMap: value 5
Element Name :child6
Element Value : value 6 
XmlTag:<child6>:::::ValueFetchedFromTheMap: value 6 
Values Inside The Map:{child1= value 1 , child2= value 2 , child3= value 3 , child4= value 4 , child5= value 5, child6= value 6 }