Encode attribute newlines in XMLEventWriter - java

I am doing some surgical XML transformations using XMLEventReader and XMLEventWriter. For the most part, I just write the events as they are read:
import javax.xml.stream.*;
import javax.xml.stream.events.XMLEvent;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.io.StringWriter;
public class StaxExample {
public static void main(String[] args) throws XMLStreamException {
String inputXml =
"<foo>" +
" <bar baz=\"a
b
c
\"/>" +
" <changeme/>" +
"</foo>";
StringWriter result = new StringWriter();
XMLEventReader reader = XMLInputFactory.newFactory().createXMLEventReader(new StringReader(inputXml));
XMLEventWriter writer = XMLOutputFactory.newFactory().createXMLEventWriter(result);
while (reader.hasNext()) {
XMLEvent event = reader.nextEvent();
//in real code, look for "changeme" and insert some stuff
writer.add(event);
}
System.out.println(result.toString());
}
}
My problem is, this produces:
<?xml version="1.0" ?><foo> <bar baz="a
b
c
"></bar> <changeme></changeme></foo>
While syntactically valid XML, it's necessary (due to a downstream consumer) that I preserve the newlines. The above XML will instead be normalized to a b c by that consumer (and indeed, by StAX itself--if I take this output and feed it back into the same program, the second time it will output baz="a b c ").
While I've given up on XMLEventWriter preserving non-semantic formatting, is there a way to prevent it from essentially changing my attribute values?

Well, I suggest you implement your own Writer:
public class EscappingNLWriter extends FilterWriter
{
public EscappingNLWriter(Writer out) {super(out);}
public void write(c)
{
if (c=='\n')
{
out.write("
");
}
else
{
out.write(c);
}
}
public void write(char[] buff, int offset, int len) throws IOException
{
// ...Same char filtering...
}
public void write(String str, int offset, int len) throws IOException
{
// ...Same char filtering...
}
}
And then use it to encapsulate the StringWriter:
Writer result = new EscappingNLWriter(new StringWriter());

If you need an absolute accuracy about where to escape newlines in the XML and where not to (i.e.: you need to escape newlines only within attributes and not elsewhere), I have another suggestion tough a little more complicated:
Look at your code:
while (reader.hasNext()) {
XMLEvent event = reader.nextEvent();
//in real code, look for "changeme" and insert some stuff
writer.add(event);
}
There is one point where you can interpose between the attribute and the writer: Just after initializing event and before passing it to writer.add, you can encapsulate the event in your own implementation of XMLEvent to ensure that if it is an instance of javax.xml.stream.events.Attribute, you will overwrite Attribute.getValue() to return the value properly escapped.
But there is an extra complication: The XMLEvents returned by a XMLEventReader usually do not include Attribute events: Attributes are included within its corresponding StartElement events. So you need one more level of encapsulation: The StartElement objects and then the contained Attribute objects.

Related

SAX parser is not working properly when xml input is given as stream and some xml elements are empty

When xml input is given as input stream to SAX parser with some of the xml elements are empty, then
the parser's character method is not called and gets different result.
For example,
XML input:
<root>
<salutation>Hello Sir</salutation>
<userName />
<parent>
<child>a</child>
</parent>
<parent>
<child>b</child>
</parent>
<parent>
<child>c</child>
</parent>
<success>yes</success>
<hoursSpent />
</root>
Parser Implementation:
public class MyContentHandler implements ContentHandler {
private String salutation;
private String userName;
private String success;
private String hoursSpent;
String tmpValue="";
public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName) throws SAXException {
if ("salutation".equals(qName)) {
userName=tmpValue;
}
}else
if ("userName".equals(qName)) {
userName=tmpValue;
}
}else
if ("success".equals(qName)) {
success=tmpValue;
}
}else
if ("hoursSpent".equals(qName)) {
hoursSpent=tmpValue;
}
}
public void characters(char[] ch, int begin, int length) throws SAXException {
tmpValue = new String(ch, begin, length).trim();
}
Main Program:
public class MainProgram{
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
SAXParserFactory saxParserFactory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
SAXParser saxParser = saxParserFactory.newSAXParser();
XMLReader xmlReader = saxParser.getXMLReader();
MyContentHandler contentHandler = new MyContentHandler(xmlReader);
xmlReader.setContentHandler(contentHandler);
String input = "<root><salutation>Hello Sir</salutation><userName /><parent><child>a</child></parent><parent><child>b</child></parent><success>yes</success><hoursSpent /></root>";
InputStream stream = new ByteArrayInputStream(input.getBytes());
xmlReader.parse(new InputSource(stream));
System.out.println(contentHandler.getUserName()); //prints Hello sir instead of null
System.out.println(contentHandler.getHoursSpent); //prints yes instead of null
if empty xml element is specified without open and close elements as below,
<userName />
instead of <userName></userName>, then the character() method in the handler class is not executed and wrong value is set. This issue occurs only when i use input xml as input stream. Please help me to solve this issue
The parser is behaving exactly as specified, it is your code that is wrong.
In general the parser makes zero-to-many calls on the characters() method between a start tag and the corresponding end tag. You need to initialize an empty buffer in startElement(), append to the buffer in characters(), and then use the accumulated value in endElement().
The way you have written it, you will not only get the wrong result for an empty element, you will also get the wrong result if the parser breaks the text up into multiple calls, which often happens if (a) there are entity references in the text, or (b) the text is very long, or (c) the text happens to span two chunks that are read from the input stream in separate read() calls.

Java XML library that preserves attribute order

I am writing a Java program that reads an XML file, makes some modifications, and writes back the XML.
Using the standard Java XML DOM API, the order of the attributes is not preserved.
That is, if I have an input file such as:
<person first_name="john" last_name="lederrey"/>
I might get an output file as:
<person last_name="lederrey" first_name="john"/>
That's correct, because the XML specification says that order attribute is not significant.
However, my program needs to preserve the order of the attributes, so that a person can easily compare the input and output document with a diff tool.
One solution for that is to process the document with SAX (instead of DOM):
Order of XML attributes after DOM processing
However, this does not work for my case,
because the transformation I need to do in one node might depend on a XPath expression on the whole document.
So, the simplest thing would be to have a XML library very similar to the standard Java DOM library, with the exception that it preserves the attribute order.
Is there such a library?
PS: Please, avoid discussing whether I should the preserve attribute order or not. This is a very interesting discussion, but it is not the point of this question.
Saxon these days offers a serialization option[1] to control the order in which attributes are output. It doesn't retain the input order (because Saxon doesn't know the input order), but it does allow you to control, for example, that the ID attribute always appears first.
And this can be very useful if the XML is going to be hand-edited; XML in which the attributes appear in the "wrong" order can be very disorienting to a human reader or editor.
If you're using this as part of a diff process then you would want to put both files through a process that normalizes the attribute order before comparing them. However, for comparing files my preferred approach is to parse them both and use the XPath deep-equal() function; or to use a specialized tool like DeltaXML.
[1] saxon:attribute-order - see http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/index.html#!extensions/output-extras/serialization-parameters
You might also want to try DecentXML, as it can preserve the attribute order, comments and even indentation.
It is very nice if you need to programmatically update an XML file that's also supposed to be human-editable. We use it for one of our configuration tools.
-- edit --
It seems it is no longer available on its original location; try these ones:
https://github.com/cartermckinnon/decentxml
https://github.com/haroldo-ok/decentxml (unnoficial and unmaintained fork; kept here just in case the other forks disappear, too)
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/DecentXML
Do it twice:
Read the document in using a DOM parser so you have references, a repository, if you will.
Then read it again using SAX. At the point where you need to make the transformation, reference the DOM version to determine what you need, then output what you need in the middle of the SAX stream.
Your best bet would be to use StAX instead of DOM for generating the original document. StAX gives you a lot of fine control over these things and lets you stream output progressively to an output stream instead of holding it all in memory.
We had similar requirements per Dave's description. A solution that worked was based on Java reflection.
The idea is to set the propOrder for the attributes at runtime. In our case there's APP_DATA element containing three attributes: app, key, and value. The generated AppData class includes "content" in propOrder and none of the other attributes:
#XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
#XmlType(name = "AppData", propOrder = {
"content"
})
public class AppData {
#XmlValue
protected String content;
#XmlAttribute(name = "Value", required = true)
protected String value;
#XmlAttribute(name = "Name", required = true)
protected String name;
#XmlAttribute(name = "App", required = true)
protected String app;
...
}
So Java reflection was used as follows to set the order at runtime:
final String[] propOrder = { "app", "name", "value" };
ReflectionUtil.changeAnnotationValue(
AppData.class.getAnnotation(XmlType.class),
"propOrder", propOrder);
final JAXBContext jaxbContext = JAXBContext
.newInstance(ADI.class);
final Marshaller adimarshaller = jaxbContext.createMarshaller();
adimarshaller.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT,
true);
adimarshaller.marshal(new JAXBElement<ADI>(new QName("ADI"),
ADI.class, adi),
new StreamResult(fileOutputStream));
The changeAnnotationValue() was borrowed from this post:
Modify a class definition's annotation string parameter at runtime
Here's the method for your convenience (credit goes to #assylias and #Balder):
/**
* Changes the annotation value for the given key of the given annotation to newValue and returns
* the previous value.
*/
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public static Object changeAnnotationValue(Annotation annotation, String key, Object newValue) {
Object handler = Proxy.getInvocationHandler(annotation);
Field f;
try {
f = handler.getClass().getDeclaredField("memberValues");
} catch (NoSuchFieldException | SecurityException e) {
throw new IllegalStateException(e);
}
f.setAccessible(true);
Map<String, Object> memberValues;
try {
memberValues = (Map<String, Object>) f.get(handler);
} catch (IllegalArgumentException | IllegalAccessException e) {
throw new IllegalStateException(e);
}
Object oldValue = memberValues.get(key);
if (oldValue == null || oldValue.getClass() != newValue.getClass()) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
}
memberValues.put(key, newValue);
return oldValue;
}
You may override AttributeSortedMap and sort attributes as you need...
The main idea: load the document, recursively copy to elements that support sorted attributeMap and serialize using the existing XMLSerializer.
File test.xml
<root>
<person first_name="john1" last_name="lederrey1"/>
<person first_name="john2" last_name="lederrey2"/>
<person first_name="john3" last_name="lederrey3"/>
<person first_name="john4" last_name="lederrey4"/>
</root>
File AttOrderSorter.java
import com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom.AttrImpl;
import com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom.AttributeMap;
import com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom.CoreDocumentImpl;
import com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom.ElementImpl;
import com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal.serialize.OutputFormat;
import com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal.serialize.XMLSerializer;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.Writer;
import java.util.List;
import static java.util.Arrays.asList;
public class AttOrderSorter {
private List<String> sortAtts = asList("last_name", "first_name");
public void format(String inFile, String outFile) throws Exception {
DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder builder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document outDocument = builder.newDocument();
try (FileInputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream(inFile)) {
Document document = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder().parse(inputStream);
Element sourceRoot = document.getDocumentElement();
Element outRoot = outDocument.createElementNS(sourceRoot.getNamespaceURI(), sourceRoot.getTagName());
outDocument.appendChild(outRoot);
copyAtts(sourceRoot.getAttributes(), outRoot);
copyElement(sourceRoot.getChildNodes(), outRoot, outDocument);
}
try (Writer outxml = new FileWriter(new File(outFile))) {
OutputFormat format = new OutputFormat();
format.setLineWidth(0);
format.setIndenting(false);
format.setIndent(2);
XMLSerializer serializer = new XMLSerializer(outxml, format);
serializer.serialize(outDocument);
}
}
private void copyElement(NodeList nodes, Element parent, Document document) {
for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
Node node = nodes.item(i);
if (node.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
Element element = new ElementImpl((CoreDocumentImpl) document, node.getNodeName()) {
#Override
public NamedNodeMap getAttributes() {
return new AttributeSortedMap(this, (AttributeMap) super.getAttributes());
}
};
copyAtts(node.getAttributes(), element);
copyElement(node.getChildNodes(), element, document);
parent.appendChild(element);
}
}
}
private void copyAtts(NamedNodeMap attributes, Element target) {
for (int i = 0; i < attributes.getLength(); i++) {
Node att = attributes.item(i);
target.setAttribute(att.getNodeName(), att.getNodeValue());
}
}
public class AttributeSortedMap extends AttributeMap {
AttributeSortedMap(ElementImpl element, AttributeMap attributes) {
super(element, attributes);
nodes.sort((o1, o2) -> {
AttrImpl att1 = (AttrImpl) o1;
AttrImpl att2 = (AttrImpl) o2;
Integer pos1 = sortAtts.indexOf(att1.getNodeName());
Integer pos2 = sortAtts.indexOf(att2.getNodeName());
if (pos1 > -1 && pos2 > -1) {
return pos1.compareTo(pos2);
} else if (pos1 > -1 || pos2 > -1) {
return pos1 == -1 ? 1 : -1;
}
return att1.getNodeName().compareTo(att2.getNodeName());
});
}
}
public void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
new AttOrderSorter().format("src/main/resources/test.xml", "src/main/resources/output.xml");
}
}
Result - file output.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
<person last_name="lederrey1" first_name="john1"/>
<person last_name="lederrey2" first_name="john2"/>
<person last_name="lederrey3" first_name="john3"/>
<person last_name="lederrey4" first_name="john4"/>
</root>
You can't use the DOM, but you can use SAX, or querying children using XPath.
Visit the answer Order of XML attributes after DOM processing.

How to improve splitting xml file performance

I've see quite a lot posts/blogs/articles about splitting XML file into a smaller chunks and decided to create my own because I have some custom requirements. Here is what I mean, consider the following XML :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<company>
<staff id="1">
<firstname>yong</firstname>
<lastname>mook kim</lastname>
<nickname>mkyong</nickname>
<salary>100000</salary>
</staff>
<staff id="2">
<firstname>yong</firstname>
<lastname>mook kim</lastname>
<nickname>mkyong</nickname>
<salary>100000</salary>
</staff>
<staff id="3">
<firstname>yong</firstname>
<lastname>mook kim</lastname>
<nickname>mkyong</nickname>
<salary>100000</salary>
</staff>
<staff id="4">
<firstname>yong</firstname>
<lastname>mook kim</lastname>
<nickname>mkyong</nickname>
<salary>100000</salary>
</staff>
<staff id="5">
<firstname>yong</firstname>
<lastname>mook kim</lastname>
<salary>100000</salary>
</staff>
</company>
I want to split this xml into n parts, each containing 1 file, but the staff element must contain nickname , if it's not there I don't want it. So this should produce 4 xml splits, each containing staff id starting at 1 until 4.
Here is my code :
public int split() throws Exception{
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(inputFilePath)));
String line;
List<String> tempList = null;
while((line=br.readLine())!=null){
if(line.contains("<?xml version=\"1.0\"") || line.contains("<" + rootElement + ">") || line.contains("</" + rootElement + ">")){
continue;
}
if(line.contains("<"+ element +">")){
tempList = new ArrayList<String>();
}
tempList.add(line);
if(line.contains("</"+ element +">")){
if(hasConditions(tempList)){
writeToSplitFile(tempList);
writtenObjectCounter++;
totalCounter++;
}
}
if(writtenObjectCounter == itemsPerFile){
writtenObjectCounter = 0;
fileCounter++;
tempList.clear();
}
}
if(tempList.size() != 0){
writeClosingRootElement();
}
return totalCounter;
}
private void writeToSplitFile(List<String> itemList) throws Exception{
BufferedWriter wr = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(outputDirectory + File.separator + "split_" + fileCounter + ".xml", true));
if(writtenObjectCounter == 0){
wr.write("<" + rootElement + ">");
wr.write("\n");
}
for (String string : itemList) {
wr.write(string);
wr.write("\n");
}
if(writtenObjectCounter == itemsPerFile-1)
wr.write("</" + rootElement + ">");
wr.close();
}
private void writeClosingRootElement() throws Exception{
BufferedWriter wr = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(outputDirectory + File.separator + "split_" + fileCounter + ".xml", true));
wr.write("</" + rootElement + ">");
wr.close();
}
private boolean hasConditions(List<String> list){
int matchList = 0;
for (String condition : conditionList) {
for (String string : list) {
if(string.contains(condition)){
matchList++;
}
}
}
if(matchList >= conditionList.size()){
return true;
}
return false;
}
I know that opening/closing stream for each written staff element which does impact the performance. But if I write once per file(which may contain n number of staff). Naturally root and split elements are configurable.
Any ideas how can I improve the performance/logic? I'd prefer some code, but good advice can be better sometimes
Edit:
This XML example is actually a dummy example, the real XML which I'm trying to split is about 300-500 different elements under split element all appearing at the random order and number varies. Stax may not be the best solution after all?
Bounty update :
I'm looking for a solution(code) that will:
Be able to split XML file into n parts with x split elements(from the dummy XML example staff is the split element).
The content of the spitted files should be wrapped in the root element from the original file(like in the dummy example company)
I'd like to be able to specify condition that must be in the split element i.e. I want only staff which have nickname, I want to discard those without nicknames. But be able to also split without conditions while running split without conditions.
The code doesn't necessarily have to improve my solution(lacking good logic and performance), but it works.
And not happy with "but it works". And I can't find enough examples of Stax for these kind of operations, user community is not great as well. It doesn't have to be Stax solution as well.
I'm probably asking too much, but I'm here to learn stuff, giving good bounty for the solution I think.
First piece of advice: don't try to write your own XML handling code. Use an XML parser - it's going to be much more reliable and quite possibly faster.
If you use an XML pull parser (e.g. StAX) you should be able to read an element at a time and write it out to disk, never reading the whole document in one go.
Here's my suggestion. It requires a streaming XSLT 3.0 processor: which means in practice that it needs Saxon-EE 9.3.
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="3.0">
<xsl:mode streamable="yes">
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:apply-templates select="company/staff"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match=staff">
<xsl:variable name="v" as="element(staff)">
<xsl:copy-of select="."/>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:if test="$v/nickname">
<xsl:result-document href="{#id}.xml">
<xsl:copy-of select="$v"/>
</xsl:result-document>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
In practice, though, unless you have hundreds of megabytes of data, I suspect a non-streaming solution will be quite fast enough, and probably faster than your hand-written Java code, given that your Java code is nothing to get excited about. At any rate, give an XSLT solution a try before you write reams of low-level Java. It's a routine problem, after all.
You could do the following with StAX:
Algorithm
Read and hold onto the root element event.
Read first chunk of XML:
Queue events until condition has been met.
If condition has been met:
Write start document event.
Write out root start element event
Write out split start element event
Write out queued events
Write out remaining events for this section.
If condition was not met then do nothing.
Repeat step 2 with next chunk of XML
Code for Your Use Case
The following code uses StAX APIs to break up the document as outlined in your question:
package forum7408938;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.xml.namespace.QName;
import javax.xml.stream.*;
import javax.xml.stream.events.*;
public class Demo {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
Demo demo = new Demo();
demo.split("src/forum7408938/input.xml", "nickname");
//demo.split("src/forum7408938/input.xml", null);
}
private void split(String xmlResource, String condition) throws Exception {
XMLEventFactory xef = XMLEventFactory.newFactory();
XMLInputFactory xif = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
XMLEventReader xer = xif.createXMLEventReader(new FileReader(xmlResource));
StartElement rootStartElement = xer.nextTag().asStartElement(); // Advance to statements element
StartDocument startDocument = xef.createStartDocument();
EndDocument endDocument = xef.createEndDocument();
XMLOutputFactory xof = XMLOutputFactory.newFactory();
while(xer.hasNext() && !xer.peek().isEndDocument()) {
boolean metCondition;
XMLEvent xmlEvent = xer.nextTag();
if(!xmlEvent.isStartElement()) {
break;
}
// BOUNTY CRITERIA
// Be able to split XML file into n parts with x split elements(from
// the dummy XML example staff is the split element).
StartElement breakStartElement = xmlEvent.asStartElement();
List<XMLEvent> cachedXMLEvents = new ArrayList<XMLEvent>();
// BOUNTY CRITERIA
// I'd like to be able to specify condition that must be in the
// split element i.e. I want only staff which have nickname, I want
// to discard those without nicknames. But be able to also split
// without conditions while running split without conditions.
if(null == condition) {
cachedXMLEvents.add(breakStartElement);
metCondition = true;
} else {
cachedXMLEvents.add(breakStartElement);
xmlEvent = xer.nextEvent();
metCondition = false;
while(!(xmlEvent.isEndElement() && xmlEvent.asEndElement().getName().equals(breakStartElement.getName()))) {
cachedXMLEvents.add(xmlEvent);
if(xmlEvent.isStartElement() && xmlEvent.asStartElement().getName().getLocalPart().equals(condition)) {
metCondition = true;
break;
}
xmlEvent = xer.nextEvent();
}
}
if(metCondition) {
// Create a file for the fragment, the name is derived from the value of the id attribute
FileWriter fileWriter = null;
fileWriter = new FileWriter("src/forum7408938/" + breakStartElement.getAttributeByName(new QName("id")).getValue() + ".xml");
// A StAX XMLEventWriter will be used to write the XML fragment
XMLEventWriter xew = xof.createXMLEventWriter(fileWriter);
xew.add(startDocument);
// BOUNTY CRITERIA
// The content of the spitted files should be wrapped in the
// root element from the original file(like in the dummy example
// company)
xew.add(rootStartElement);
// Write the XMLEvents that were cached while when we were
// checking the fragment to see if it matched our criteria.
for(XMLEvent cachedEvent : cachedXMLEvents) {
xew.add(cachedEvent);
}
// Write the XMLEvents that we still need to parse from this
// fragment
xmlEvent = xer.nextEvent();
while(xer.hasNext() && !(xmlEvent.isEndElement() && xmlEvent.asEndElement().getName().equals(breakStartElement.getName()))) {
xew.add(xmlEvent);
xmlEvent = xer.nextEvent();
}
xew.add(xmlEvent);
// Close everything we opened
xew.add(xef.createEndElement(rootStartElement.getName(), null));
xew.add(endDocument);
fileWriter.close();
}
}
}
}
#Jon Skeet is spot on as usual in his advice. #Blaise Doughan gave you a very basic picture of using StAX (which would be my preferred choice, although you can do basically the same thing with SAX). You seem to be looking for something more explicit, so here's some pseudo code to get you started (based on StAX):
find first "staff" StartElement
set a flag indicating you are in a "staff" element and start tracking the depth (StartElement is +1, EndElement is -1)
now, process the "staff" sub-elements, grab any of the data you care about and put it in a file (or where ever)
keep processing until your depth reaches 0 (when you find the matching "staff" EndElement)
unset the flag indicating you are in a "staff" element
search for the next "staff" StartElement
if found, go to 2. and repeat
if not found, document is complete
EDIT:
wow, i have to say i'm amazed at the number of people willing to do someone else's work for them. i didn't realize SO was basically a free version of rent-a-coder.
#Gandalf StormCrow:
Let me divide your problem into three separate issues:-
i) Reading XML and simultaenous split XML in best possible way
ii) Checking condition in split file
iii) If condition met, process that spilt file.
for i), there are ofcourse mutliple solutions: SAX, STAX and other parsers and as simple as that as you mentioned just read using simple java io operations and search for tags.
I believe SAX/STAX/simple java IO, anything will do. I have taken your example as base for my solution.
ii) Checking condition in split file: you have used contains() method to check for existence of nickname. This does not seem best way: what if your conditions are as complex as if nickname should be present but length>5 or salary should be numeric etc.
I would use new java XML validation framework for this which make uses of XML schema.Please note we can cache schema object in memory so to reuse it again and again. This new validation framework is pretty fast.
iii) If condition met, process that spilt file.
You may want use java concurrent APIs to submit async tasks(ExecutorService class) to acheive parallel execution for faster performance.
So considering above points, one possible solution can be:-
You can create a company.xsd file like:-
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<schema xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
targetNamespace="http://www.example.org/NewXMLSchema"
xmlns:tns="http://www.example.org/NewXMLSchema"
elementFormDefault="unqualified">
<element name="company">
<complexType>
<sequence>
<element name="staff" type="tns:stafftype"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>
</element>
<complexType name="stafftype">
<sequence>
<element name="firstname" type="string" minOccurs="0" />
<element name="lastname" type="string" minOccurs="0" />
<element name="nickname" type="string" minOccurs="1" />
<element name="salary" type="int" minOccurs="0" />
</sequence>
</complexType>
</schema>
then your java code would look like:-
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import javax.xml.validation.Schema;
import javax.xml.validation.SchemaFactory;
import javax.xml.validation.Validator;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
public class testXML {
// Lookup a factory for the W3C XML Schema language
static SchemaFactory factory = SchemaFactory
.newInstance("http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema");
// Compile the schema.
static File schemaLocation = new File("company.xsd");
static Schema schema = null;
static {
try {
schema = factory.newSchema(schemaLocation);
} catch (SAXException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
private final ExecutorService pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(20);;
boolean validate(StringBuffer splitBuffer) {
boolean isValid = false;
Validator validator = schema.newValidator();
try {
validator.validate(new StreamSource(new ByteArrayInputStream(
splitBuffer.toString().getBytes())));
isValid = true;
} catch (SAXException ex) {
System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
return isValid;
}
void split(BufferedReader br, String rootElementName,
String splitElementName) {
StringBuffer splitBuffer = null;
String line = null;
String startRootElement = "<" + rootElementName + ">";
String endRootElement = "</" + rootElementName + ">";
String startSplitElement = "<" + splitElementName + ">";
String endSplitElement = "</" + splitElementName + ">";
String xmlDeclaration = "<?xml version=\"1.0\"";
boolean startFlag = false, endflag = false;
try {
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
if (line.contains(xmlDeclaration)
|| line.contains(startRootElement)
|| line.contains(endRootElement)) {
continue;
}
if (line.contains(startSplitElement)) {
startFlag = true;
endflag = false;
splitBuffer = new StringBuffer(startRootElement);
splitBuffer.append(line);
} else if (line.contains(endSplitElement)) {
endflag = true;
startFlag = false;
splitBuffer.append(line);
splitBuffer.append(endRootElement);
} else if (startFlag) {
splitBuffer.append(line);
}
if (endflag) {
//process splitBuffer
boolean result = validate(splitBuffer);
if (result) {
//send it to a thread for processing further
//it is async so that main thread can continue for next
pool.submit(new ProcessingHandler(splitBuffer));
}
}
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
class ProcessingHandler implements Runnable {
String splitXML = null;
ProcessingHandler(StringBuffer splitXMLBuffer) {
this.splitXML = splitXMLBuffer.toString();
}
#Override
public void run() {
// do like writing to a file etc.
}
}
Have a look at this. This is slightly reworked sample from xmlpull.org:
http://www.xmlpull.org/v1/download/unpacked/doc/quick_intro.html
The following should do all you need unless you have nested splitting tags like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<company>
<staff id="1">
<firstname>yong</firstname>
<lastname>mook kim</lastname>
<nickname>mkyong</nickname>
<salary>100000</salary>
<other>
<staff>
...
</staff>
</other>
</staff>
</company>
To run it in pass-through mode simply pass null as splitting tag.
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParser;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserException;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserFactory;
public class XppSample {
private String rootTag;
private String splitTag;
private String requiredTag;
private int flushThreshold;
private String fileName;
private String rootTagEnd;
private boolean hasRequiredTag = false;
private int flushCount = 0;
private int fileNo = 0;
private String header;
private XmlPullParser xpp;
private StringBuilder nodeBuf = new StringBuilder();
private StringBuilder fileBuf = new StringBuilder();
public XppSample(String fileName, String rootTag, String splitTag, String requiredTag, int flushThreshold) throws XmlPullParserException, FileNotFoundException {
this.rootTag = rootTag;
rootTagEnd = "</" + rootTag + ">";
this.splitTag = splitTag;
this.requiredTag = requiredTag;
this.flushThreshold = flushThreshold;
this.fileName = fileName;
XmlPullParserFactory factory = XmlPullParserFactory.newInstance(System.getProperty(XmlPullParserFactory.PROPERTY_NAME), null);
factory.setNamespaceAware(true);
xpp = factory.newPullParser();
xpp.setInput(new FileReader(fileName));
}
public void processDocument() throws XmlPullParserException, IOException {
int eventType = xpp.getEventType();
do {
if(eventType == XmlPullParser.START_TAG) {
processStartElement(xpp);
} else if(eventType == XmlPullParser.END_TAG) {
processEndElement(xpp);
} else if(eventType == XmlPullParser.TEXT) {
processText(xpp);
}
eventType = xpp.next();
} while (eventType != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT);
saveFile();
}
public void processStartElement(XmlPullParser xpp) {
int holderForStartAndLength[] = new int[2];
String name = xpp.getName();
char ch[] = xpp.getTextCharacters(holderForStartAndLength);
int start = holderForStartAndLength[0];
int length = holderForStartAndLength[1];
if(name.equals(rootTag)) {
int pos = start + length;
header = new String(ch, 0, pos);
} else {
if(requiredTag==null || name.equals(requiredTag)) {
hasRequiredTag = true;
}
nodeBuf.append(xpp.getText());
}
}
public void flushBuffer() throws IOException {
if(hasRequiredTag) {
fileBuf.append(nodeBuf);
if(((++flushCount)%flushThreshold)==0) {
saveFile();
}
}
nodeBuf = new StringBuilder();
hasRequiredTag = false;
}
public void saveFile() throws IOException {
if(fileBuf.length()>0) {
String splitFile = header + fileBuf.toString() + rootTagEnd;
FileUtils.writeStringToFile(new File((fileNo++) + "_" + fileName), splitFile);
fileBuf = new StringBuilder();
}
}
public void processEndElement (XmlPullParser xpp) throws IOException {
String name = xpp.getName();
if(name.equals(rootTag)) {
flushBuffer();
} else {
nodeBuf.append(xpp.getText());
if(name.equals(splitTag)) {
flushBuffer();
}
}
}
public void processText (XmlPullParser xpp) throws XmlPullParserException {
int holderForStartAndLength[] = new int[2];
char ch[] = xpp.getTextCharacters(holderForStartAndLength);
int start = holderForStartAndLength[0];
int length = holderForStartAndLength[1];
String content = new String(ch, start, length);
nodeBuf.append(content);
}
public static void main (String args[]) throws XmlPullParserException, IOException {
//XppSample app = new XppSample("input.xml", "company", "staff", "nickname", 3);
XppSample app = new XppSample("input.xml", "company", "staff", null, 3);
app.processDocument();
}
}
Normally I would suggest using StAX, but it is unclear to me how 'stateful' your real XML is. If simple, then use SAX for ultimate performance, if not-so-simple, use StAX. So you need to
read bytes from disk
convert them to characters
parse the XML
determine whether to keep XML or throw away (skip out subtree)
write XML
convert characters to bytes
write to disk
Now, it might seem like steps 3-5 are the most resource-intensive, but I would rate them as
Most: 1 + 7
Middle: 2 + 6
Least: 3 + 4 + 5
As operations 1 and 7 are kind of seperate of the rest, you should do them in an async way, at least creating multiple small files is best done in n other threads, if you are familiar with multi-threading. For increased performance, you might also look into the new IO stuff in Java.
Now for steps 2 + 3 and 5 + 6 you can go a long way with FasterXML, it really does a lot of the stuff you are looking for, like triggering JVM hot-spot attention in the right places; might even support async reading/writing looking through the code quickly.
So then we are left with step 5, and depending on your logic, you should either
a. make an object binding, then decide how what to do
b. write XML anyways, hoping for the best, and then throw it away if no 'staff' element is present.
Whatever you do, object reuse is sensible. Note that both alternatives (obisously) requires the same amount of parsing (skip out of subtree ASAP), and for alternative b, that a little extra XML is actually not so bad performancewise, ideally make sure your char buffers are > one unit.
Alternative b is the most easy to implement, simply copy the 'xml event' from your reader to writer, example for StAX:
private static void copyEvent(int event, XMLStreamReader reader, XMLStreamWriter writer) throws XMLStreamException {
if (event == XMLStreamConstants.START_ELEMENT) {
String localName = reader.getLocalName();
String namespace = reader.getNamespaceURI();
// TODO check this stuff again before setting in production
if (namespace != null) {
if (writer.getPrefix(namespace) != null) {
writer.writeStartElement(namespace, localName);
} else {
writer.writeStartElement(reader.getPrefix(), localName, namespace);
}
} else {
writer.writeStartElement(localName);
}
// first: namespace definition attributes
if(reader.getNamespaceCount() > 0) {
int namespaces = reader.getNamespaceCount();
for(int i = 0; i < namespaces; i++) {
String namespaceURI = reader.getNamespaceURI(i);
if(writer.getPrefix(namespaceURI) == null) {
String namespacePrefix = reader.getNamespacePrefix(i);
if(namespacePrefix == null) {
writer.writeDefaultNamespace(namespaceURI);
} else {
writer.writeNamespace(namespacePrefix, namespaceURI);
}
}
}
}
int attributes = reader.getAttributeCount();
// the write the rest of the attributes
for (int i = 0; i < attributes; i++) {
String attributeNamespace = reader.getAttributeNamespace(i);
if (attributeNamespace != null && attributeNamespace.length() != 0) {
writer.writeAttribute(attributeNamespace, reader.getAttributeLocalName(i), reader.getAttributeValue(i));
} else {
writer.writeAttribute(reader.getAttributeLocalName(i), reader.getAttributeValue(i));
}
}
} else if (event == XMLStreamConstants.END_ELEMENT) {
writer.writeEndElement();
} else if (event == XMLStreamConstants.CDATA) {
String array = reader.getText();
writer.writeCData(array);
} else if (event == XMLStreamConstants.COMMENT) {
String array = reader.getText();
writer.writeComment(array);
} else if (event == XMLStreamConstants.CHARACTERS) {
String array = reader.getText();
if (array.length() > 0 && !reader.isWhiteSpace()) {
writer.writeCharacters(array);
}
} else if (event == XMLStreamConstants.START_DOCUMENT) {
writer.writeStartDocument();
} else if (event == XMLStreamConstants.END_DOCUMENT) {
writer.writeEndDocument();
}
}
And for a subtree,
private static void copySubTree(XMLStreamReader reader, XMLStreamWriter writer) throws XMLStreamException {
reader.require(XMLStreamConstants.START_ELEMENT, null, null);
copyEvent(XMLStreamConstants.START_ELEMENT, reader, writer);
int level = 1;
do {
int event = reader.next();
if(event == XMLStreamConstants.START_ELEMENT) {
level++;
} else if(event == XMLStreamConstants.END_ELEMENT) {
level--;
}
copyEvent(event, reader, writer);
} while(level > 0);
}
From which you probably can deduct how to skip out to a certain level. In general, for stateful StaX parsing, use the pattern
private static void parseSubTree(XMLStreamReader reader) throws XMLStreamException {
int level = 1;
do {
int event = reader.next();
if(event == XMLStreamConstants.START_ELEMENT) {
level++;
// do stateful stuff here
// for child logic:
if(reader.getLocalName().equals("Whatever")) {
parseSubTreeForWhatever(reader);
level --; // read from level 1 to 0 in submethod.
}
// alternatively, faster
if(level == 4) {
parseSubTreeForWhateverAtRelativeLevel4(reader);
level --; // read from level 1 to 0 in submethod.
}
} else if(event == XMLStreamConstants.END_ELEMENT) {
level--;
// do stateful stuff here, too
}
} while(level > 0);
}
where you in the start of the document read till the first start element and break (add the writer+copy for your use of course, as above).
Note that if you do an object binding, these methods should be placed in that object, and equally for the serialization methods.
I am pretty sure you will get 10s of MB/s on a modern system, and that should be sufficient. An issue to be investigate further, is approaches to use multiple cores for the actualy input, if you know for a fact the encoding subset, like non-crazy UTF-8, or ISO-8859, then random access might be possible -> send to different cores.
Have fun, and tell use how it went ;)
Edit: Almost forgot, if you for some reason are the one who is creating the file in the first place, or you will be reading them after splitting, you will se HUGE performance gains using XML binarization; there exist XML Schema generators which again can go into code generators. (And some XSLT transform libs use code generation too.) And run with the -server option for JVM.
How to make i faster:
Use asynchronous writes, possibly in parallel, might boost your perf if you have RAID-X something disks
Write to an SSD instead of HDD
My suggestion is that SAX, STAX, or DOM are not the ideal xml parser for your problem, the perfect solutions is called vtd-xml, there is an article on this subject explaining why DOM sax and STAX all done something very wrong... the code below is the shortest you have to write, yet performs 10x faster than DOM or SAX. http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-07-2006/jw-0724-vtdxml.html
Here is a latest paper entitled Processing XML with Java – A Performance Benchmark: http://recipp.ipp.pt/bitstream/10400.22/1847/1/ART_BrunoOliveira_2013.pdf
import com.ximpleware.*;
import java.io.*;
public class gandalf {
public static void main(String a[]) throws VTDException, Exception{
VTDGen vg = new VTDGen();
if (vg.parseFile("c:\\xml\\gandalf.txt", false)){
VTDNav vn=vg.getNav();
AutoPilot ap = new AutoPilot(vn);
ap.selectXPath("/company/staff[nickname]");
int i=-1;
int count=0;
while((i=ap.evalXPath())!=-1){
vn.dumpFragment("c:\\xml\\staff"+count+".xml");
count++;
}
}
}
}
Here is DOM based solution. I have tested this with the xml you provided. This needs to be checked against the actual xml files that you have.
Since this is based on DOM parser, please remember that this will require a lot of memory depending upon your xml file size. But its much faster as it's DOM based.
Algorithm :
Parse the document
Extract the root element name
Get list he nodes based on the split criteria (using XPath)
For each node, create an empty document with root element name as extracted in step #2
Insert the node in this new document
Check if nodes are to be filtered or not.
If nodes are to be filtered, then check if a specified element is present in the newly created doc.
If node is not present, don't write to the file.
If the nodes are NOT to be filtered at all, don't check for condition in #7, and write the document to the file.
This can be run from command prompt as follows
java XMLSplitter xmlFileLocation splitElement filter filterElement
For the xml you mentioned it will be
java XMLSplitter input.xml staff true nickname
In case you don't want to filter
java XMLSplitter input.xml staff
Here is the complete java code:
package com.xml.xpath;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.io.StringWriter;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.transform.OutputKeys;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPath;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathConstants;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathExpression;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathExpressionException;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory;
import org.w3c.dom.DOMException;
import org.w3c.dom.DOMImplementation;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
public class XMLSplitter {
DocumentBuilder builder = null;
XPath xpath = null;
Transformer transformer = null;
String filterElement;
String splitElement;
String xmlFileLocation;
boolean filter = true;
public static void main(String[] arg) throws Exception{
XMLSplitter xMLSplitter = null;
if(arg.length < 4){
if(arg.length < 2){
System.out.println("Insufficient arguments !!!");
System.out.println("Usage: XMLSplitter xmlFileLocation splitElement filter filterElement ");
return;
}else{
System.out.println("Filter is off...");
xMLSplitter = new XMLSplitter();
xMLSplitter.init(arg[0],arg[1],false,null);
}
}else{
xMLSplitter = new XMLSplitter();
xMLSplitter.init(arg[0],arg[1],Boolean.parseBoolean(arg[2]),arg[3]);
}
xMLSplitter.start();
}
public void init(String xmlFileLocation, String splitElement, boolean filter, String filterElement )
throws ParserConfigurationException, TransformerConfigurationException{
//Initialize the Document builder
System.out.println("Initializing..");
DocumentBuilderFactory domFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
domFactory.setNamespaceAware(true);
builder = domFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
//Initialize the transformer
TransformerFactory transformerFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.METHOD, "xml");
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING,"UTF-8");
transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "4");
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
//Initialize the xpath
XPathFactory factory = XPathFactory.newInstance();
xpath = factory.newXPath();
this.filterElement = filterElement;
this.splitElement = splitElement;
this.xmlFileLocation = xmlFileLocation;
this.filter = filter;
}
public void start() throws Exception{
//Parser the file
System.out.println("Parsing file.");
Document doc = builder. parse(xmlFileLocation);
//Get the root node name
System.out.println("Getting root element.");
XPathExpression rootElementexpr = xpath.compile("/");
Object rootExprResult = rootElementexpr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);
NodeList rootNode = (NodeList) rootExprResult;
String rootNodeName = rootNode.item(0).getFirstChild().getNodeName();
//Get the list of split elements
XPathExpression expr = xpath.compile("//"+splitElement);
Object result = expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);
NodeList nodes = (NodeList) result;
System.out.println("Total number of split nodes "+nodes.getLength());
for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
//Wrap each node inside root of the parent xml doc
Node sigleNode = wrappInRootElement(rootNodeName,nodes.item(i));
//Get the XML string of the fragment
String xmlFragment = serializeDocument(sigleNode);
//System.out.println(xmlFragment);
//Write the xml fragment in file.
storeInFile(xmlFragment,i);
}
}
private Node wrappInRootElement(String rootNodeName, Node fragmentDoc)
throws XPathExpressionException, ParserConfigurationException, DOMException,
SAXException, IOException, TransformerException{
//Create empty doc with just root node
DOMImplementation domImplementation = builder.getDOMImplementation();
Document doc = domImplementation.createDocument(null,null,null);
Element theDoc = doc.createElement(rootNodeName);
doc.appendChild(theDoc);
//Insert the fragment inside the root node
InputSource inStream = new InputSource();
String xmlString = serializeDocument(fragmentDoc);
inStream.setCharacterStream(new StringReader(xmlString));
Document fr = builder.parse(inStream);
theDoc.appendChild(doc.importNode(fr.getFirstChild(),true));
return doc;
}
private String serializeDocument(Node doc) throws TransformerException, XPathExpressionException{
if(!serializeThisNode(doc)){
return null;
}
DOMSource domSource = new DOMSource(doc);
StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
StreamResult streamResult = new StreamResult(stringWriter);
transformer.transform(domSource, streamResult);
String xml = stringWriter.toString();
return xml;
}
//Check whether node is to be stored in file or rejected based on input
private boolean serializeThisNode(Node doc) throws XPathExpressionException{
if(!filter){
return true;
}
XPathExpression filterElementexpr = xpath.compile("//"+filterElement);
Object result = filterElementexpr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);
NodeList nodes = (NodeList) result;
if(nodes.item(0) != null){
return true;
}else{
return false;
}
}
private void storeInFile(String content, int fileIndex) throws IOException{
if(content == null || content.length() == 0){
return;
}
String fileName = splitElement+fileIndex+".xml";
File file = new File(fileName);
if(file.exists()){
System.out.println(" The file "+fileName+" already exists !! cannot create the file with the same name ");
return;
}
FileWriter fileWriter = new FileWriter(file);
fileWriter.write(content);
fileWriter.close();
System.out.println("Generated file "+fileName);
}
}
Let me know if this works for you or any other help regarding this code.

Code for Using StAX in java

I have an 200 MB xml of the following form:
<school name = "some school">
<class standard = "2A">
<student>
.....
</student>
<student>
.....
</student>
<student>
.....
</student>
</class>
</school>
I need to split this xml into several files using StAX such that n students come under each xml file and the structure is preserved as <school> then <class> and <students> under them. The attributes of School and class also must be preserved in the resultant xmls.
Here is the code I am using:
XMLInputFactory inputFactory = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
String xmlFile = "input.XML";
XMLEventReader reader = inputFactory.createXMLEventReader(new FileReader(xmlFile));
XMLOutputFactory outputFactory = XMLOutputFactory.newInstance();
outputFactory.setProperty("javax.xml.stream.isRepairingNamespaces", Boolean.TRUE);
XMLEventWriter writer = null;
int count = 0;
QName name = new QName(null, "student");
try {
while (true) {
XMLEvent event = reader.nextEvent();
if (event.isStartElement()) {
StartElement element = event.asStartElement();
if (element.getName().equals(name)) {
String filename = "input"+ count + ".xml";
writer = outputFactory.createXMLEventWriter(new FileWriter(filename));
writeToFile(reader, event, writer);
writer.close();
count++;
}
}
if (event.isEndDocument())
break;
}
} catch (XMLStreamException e) {
throw e;
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
reader.close();
}
private static void writeToFile(XMLEventReader reader, XMLEvent startEvent, XMLEventWriter writer) throws XMLStreamException, IOException {
StartElement element = startEvent.asStartElement();
QName name = element.getName();
int stack = 1;
writer.add(element);
while (true) {
XMLEvent event = reader.nextEvent();
if (event.isStartElement() && event.asStartElement().getName().equals(name))
stack++;
if (event.isEndElement()) {
EndElement end = event.asEndElement();
if (end.getName().equals(name)) {
stack--;
if (stack == 0) {
writer.add(event);
break;
}
}
}
writer.add(event);
}
}
Please check the function call writeToFile(reader, event, writer) in the try block. Here the reader object has only the student tag. I need the reader has the school, class, and then n students in it. so that the file generated has a similar structure as the original only with lesser children per file.
Thanks in advance.
I think you can keep track of list of parent events prior to the "student" start element event and pass it to the writeToFile() method. Then in the writeToFile() method you can use that list to simulate the "school" and "class" events.
You have code for determining when to start a new file which I haven't examined closely, but the process of finishing one file and starting the next is definitely incomplete.
On reaching a point where you want to end a file, you have to generate end events for the enclosing <class> and <school> tags and for the document before closing it. When you start your new file, you need to generate start events for the same after opening it and before starting again to copy student events.
In order to generate the start events properly, you will have to retain the corresponding events from the input.
Save yourself trouble and time and use the flat xml file structure you currently have, and then create POJO Objects which will represent each object as you've stated; Student, School and Class. And then using Jaxb bind the objects with different part of the Structure. You can then effectively unmarshal the xml and access the various elements as if you're dealing with SQL objects.
Use this link as a starting point XML parsing with JAXB
One issue doing it this way is memory consumption. For design flexibility and memory management, I will suggest using SQL to handle this.

How can I force a SAX parser to use a DTD if one is not specified in the input file?

How can I force a SAX parser (specifically, Xerces in Java) to use a DTD when parsing a document without having any doctype in the input document? Is this even possible?
Here are some more details of my scenario:
We have a bunch of XML documents that conform to the same DTD that are generated by multiple different systems (none of which I can change). Some of these systems add a doctype to their output documents, others do not. Some use named character entities, some do not. Some use named character entities without declaring a doctype. I know that's not kosher, but it's what I have to work with.
I'm working on system that needs to parse these files in Java. Currently, it's handling the above cases by first reading in the XML document as a stream, attempting to detect if it has a doctype defined, and adding a doctype declaration if one isn't already present. The problem is that this code is buggy, and I'd like to replace it with something cleaner.
The files are large, so I can't use a DOM-based solution. I'm also trying get character entities resolved, so it doesn't help to use an XML Schema.
If you have a solution, could you please post it directly instead of linking to it? It doesn't do Stack Overflow much good if in a the future there's a correct solution with a dead link.
I think it is no sane way to set DOCTYPE, if document hasn't one. Possible solution is write fake one, as you already do. If you're using SAX, you can use this fake InputStream and fake DefaultHandler implementation. (will work only for latin1 one-byte encoding)
I know this solution also ugly, but it only one works well with big data streams.
Here is some code.
private enum State {readXmlDec, readXmlDecEnd, writeFakeDoctipe, writeEnd};
private class MyInputStream extends InputStream{
private final InputStream is;
private StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
private int pos = 0;
private String doctype = "<!DOCTYPE register SYSTEM \"fake.dtd\">";
private State state = State.readXmlDec;
private MyInputStream(InputStream source) {
is = source;
}
#Override
public int read() throws IOException {
int bit;
switch (state){
case readXmlDec:
bit = is.read();
sb.append(Character.toChars(bit));
if(sb.toString().equals("<?xml")){
state = State.readXmlDecEnd;
}
break;
case readXmlDecEnd:
bit = is.read();
if(Character.toChars(bit)[0] == '>'){
state = State.writeFakeDoctipe;
}
break;
case writeFakeDoctipe:
bit = doctype.charAt(pos++);
if(doctype.length() == pos){
state = State.writeEnd;
}
break;
default:
bit = is.read();
break;
}
return bit;
}
#Override
public void close() throws IOException {
super.close();
is.close();
}
}
private static class MyHandler extends DefaultHandler {
#Override
public InputSource resolveEntity(String publicId, String systemId) throws IOException, SAXException {
System.out.println("resolve "+ systemId);
// get real dtd
InputStream is = ClassLoader.class.getResourceAsStream("/register.dtd");
return new InputSource(is);
}
... // rest of code
}

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