Develop Reference

Parsing XML file containing HTML entities in Java without changing the XML

I have to parse a bunch of XML files in Java that sometimes -- and invalidly -- contain HTML entities such as —, > and so forth. I understand the correct way of dealing with this is to add suitable entity declarations to the XML file before parsing. However, I can't do that as I have no control over those XML files.
Is there some kind of callback I can override that is invoked whenever the Java XML parser encounters such an entity? I haven't been able to find one in the API.
I'd like to use:
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder parser = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = parser.parse( stream );
I found that I can override resolveEntity in org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler, but how do I use this with the higher-level API?
Here's a full example:
public class Main {
public static void main( String [] args ) throws Exception {
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder parser = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = parser.parse( new FileInputStream( "test.xml" ));
}
}
with test.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<foo>
<bar>Some text — invalid!</bar>
</foo>
Produces:
[Fatal Error] :3:20: The entity "nbsp" was referenced, but not declared.
Exception in thread "main" org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; lineNumber: 3; columnNumber: 20; The entity "nbsp" was referenced, but not declared.
Update: I have been poking around in the JDK source code with a debugger, and boy, what an amount of spaghetti. I have no idea what the design is there, or whether there is one. Just how many layers of an onion can one layer on top of each other?
They key class seems to be com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLEntityManager, but I cannot find any code that either lets me add stuff into it before it gets used, or that attempts to resolve entities without going through that class.

I would use a library like Jsoup for this purpose. I tested the following below and it works. I don't know if this helps. It can be located here: http://jsoup.org/download
public static void main(String args[]){
String html = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><foo>" +
"<bar>Some text — invalid!</bar></foo>";
Document doc = Jsoup.parse(html, "", Parser.xmlParser());
for (Element e : doc.select("bar")) {
System.out.println(e);
}
}
Result:
<bar>
Some text — invalid!
</bar>
Loading from a file can be found here:
http://jsoup.org/cookbook/input/load-document-from-file

Issue - 1: I have to parse a bunch of XML files in Java that sometimes -- and
invalidly -- contain HTML entities such as —
XML has only five predefined entities. The —, is not among them. It works only when used in plain HTML or in legacy JSP. So, SAX will not help. It can be done using StaX which has high level iterator based API. (Collected from this link)
Issue - 2: I found that I can override resolveEntity in
org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler, but how do I use this with the
higher-level API?
Streaming API for XML, called StaX, is an API for reading and writing XML Documents.
StaX is a Pull-Parsing model. Application can take the control over parsing the XML documents by pulling (taking) the events from the parser.
The core StaX API falls into two categories and they are listed below. They are
Cursor based API: It is low-level API. cursor-based API allows the application to process XML as a stream of tokens aka events
Iterator based API: The higher-level iterator-based API allows the application to process XML as a series of event objects, each of which communicates a piece of the XML structure to the application.
STaX API has support for the notion of not replacing character entity references, by way of the IS_REPLACING_ENTITY_REFERENCES property:
Requires the parser to replace internal entity references with their
replacement text and report them as characters
This can be set into an XmlInputFactory, which is then in turn used to construct an XmlEventReader or XmlStreamReader.
However, the API is careful to say that this property is only intended to force the implementation to perform the replacement, rather than forcing it to notreplace them.
You may try it. Hope it will solve your issue. For your case,
Main.java
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLEventReader;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLInputFactory;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamException;
import javax.xml.stream.events.EntityReference;
import javax.xml.stream.events.XMLEvent;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
XMLInputFactory inputFactory = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
inputFactory.setProperty(
XMLInputFactory.IS_REPLACING_ENTITY_REFERENCES, false);
XMLEventReader reader;
try {
reader = inputFactory
.createXMLEventReader(new FileInputStream("F://test.xml"));
while (reader.hasNext()) {
XMLEvent event = reader.nextEvent();
if (event.isEntityReference()) {
EntityReference ref = (EntityReference) event;
System.out.println("Entity Reference: " + ref.getName());
}
}
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (XMLStreamException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
test.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<foo>
<bar>Some text — invalid!</bar>
</foo>
Output:
Entity Reference: nbsp
Entity Reference: mdash
Credit goes to #skaffman.
Related Link:
http://www.journaldev.com/1191/how-to-read-xml-file-in-java-using-java-stax-api
http://www.journaldev.com/1226/java-stax-cursor-based-api-read-xml-example
http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/JavaXML/article.html
Is there a Java XML API that can parse a document without resolving character entities?
UPDATE:
Issue - 3: Is there a way to use StaX to "filter" the entities (replacing them
with something else, for example) and still produce a Document at the
end of the process?
To create a new document using the StAX API, it is required to create an XMLStreamWriter that provides methods to produce XML opening and closing tags, attributes and character content.
There are 5 methods of XMLStreamWriter for document.
xmlsw.writeStartDocument(); - initialises an empty document to which
elements can be added
xmlsw.writeStartElement(String s) -creates a new element named s
xmlsw.writeAttribute(String name, String value)- adds the attribute
name with the corresponding value to the last element produced by a
call to writeStartElement. It is possible to add attributes as long
as no call to writeElementStart,writeCharacters or writeEndElement
has been done.
xmlsw.writeEndElement - close the last started element
xmlsw.writeCharacters(String s) - creates a new text node with
content s as content of the last started element.
A sample example is attached with it:
StAXExpand.java
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLOutputFactory;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamException;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamWriter;
import java.util.Arrays;
public class StAXExpand {
static XMLStreamWriter xmlsw = null;
public static void main(String[] argv) {
try {
xmlsw = XMLOutputFactory.newInstance()
.createXMLStreamWriter(System.out);
CompactTokenizer tok = new CompactTokenizer(
new FileReader(argv[0]));
String rootName = "dummyRoot";
// ignore everything preceding the word before the first "["
while(!tok.nextToken().equals("[")){
rootName=tok.getToken();
}
// start creating new document
xmlsw.writeStartDocument();
ignorableSpacing(0);
xmlsw.writeStartElement(rootName);
expand(tok,3);
ignorableSpacing(0);
xmlsw.writeEndDocument();
xmlsw.flush();
xmlsw.close();
} catch (XMLStreamException e){
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
} catch (IOException ex) {
System.out.println("IOException"+ex);
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
public static void expand(CompactTokenizer tok, int indent)
throws IOException,XMLStreamException {
tok.skip("[");
while(tok.getToken().equals("#")) {// add attributes
String attName = tok.nextToken();
tok.nextToken();
xmlsw.writeAttribute(attName,tok.skip("["));
tok.nextToken();
tok.skip("]");
}
boolean lastWasElement=true; // for controlling the output of newlines
while(!tok.getToken().equals("]")){ // process content
String s = tok.getToken().trim();
tok.nextToken();
if(tok.getToken().equals("[")){
if(lastWasElement)ignorableSpacing(indent);
xmlsw.writeStartElement(s);
expand(tok,indent+3);
lastWasElement=true;
} else {
xmlsw.writeCharacters(s);
lastWasElement=false;
}
}
tok.skip("]");
if(lastWasElement)ignorableSpacing(indent-3);
xmlsw.writeEndElement();
}
private static char[] blanks = "\n".toCharArray();
private static void ignorableSpacing(int nb)
throws XMLStreamException {
if(nb>blanks.length){// extend the length of space array
blanks = new char[nb+1];
blanks[0]='\n';
Arrays.fill(blanks,1,blanks.length,' ');
}
xmlsw.writeCharacters(blanks, 0, nb+1);
}
}
CompactTokenizer.java
import java.io.Reader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.StreamTokenizer;
public class CompactTokenizer {
private StreamTokenizer st;
CompactTokenizer(Reader r){
st = new StreamTokenizer(r);
st.resetSyntax(); // remove parsing of numbers...
st.wordChars('\u0000','\u00FF'); // everything is part of a word
// except the following...
st.ordinaryChar('\n');
st.ordinaryChar('[');
st.ordinaryChar(']');
st.ordinaryChar('#');
}
public String nextToken() throws IOException{
st.nextToken();
while(st.ttype=='\n'||
(st.ttype==StreamTokenizer.TT_WORD &&
st.sval.trim().length()==0))
st.nextToken();
return getToken();
}
public String getToken(){
return (st.ttype == StreamTokenizer.TT_WORD) ? st.sval : (""+(char)st.ttype);
}
public String skip(String sym) throws IOException {
if(getToken().equals(sym))
return nextToken();
else
throw new IllegalArgumentException("skip: "+sym+" expected but"+
sym +" found ");
}
}
For more, you can follow the tutorial
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jaxp/stax/example.html
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-tipstx2/index.html
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~lapalme/ForestInsteadOfTheTrees/HTML/ch09s03.html
http://staf.sourceforge.net/current/STAXDoc.pdf

Another approach, since you're not using a rigid OXM approach anyway.
You might want to try using a less rigid parser such as JSoup?
This will stop immediate problems with invalid XML schemas etc, but it will just devolve the problem into your code.

Just to throw in a different approach to a solution:
You might envelope your input stream with a stream inplementation that replaces the entities by something legal.
While this is a hack for sure, it should be a quick and easy solution (or better say: workaround).
Not as elegant and clean as a xml framework internal solution, though.

I made yesterday something similar i need to add value from unziped XML in stream to database.
//import I'm not sure if all are necessary :)
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.xpath.*;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
//I didnt checked this code now because i'm in work for sure its work maybe
you will need to do little changes
InputSource is = new InputSource(new FileInputStream("test.xml"));
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = db.parse(is);
XPathFactory xpf = XPathFactory.newInstance();
XPath xpath = xpf.newXPath();
String words= xpath.evaluate("/foo/bar", doc.getDocumentElement());
ParsingHexToChar.parseToChar(words);
// lib which i use common-lang3.jar
//metod to parse
public static String parseToChar( String words){
String decode= org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml4(words);
return decode;
}

Try this using org.apache.commons package :
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder parser = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
InputStream in = new FileInputStream(xmlfile);
String unescapeHtml4 = IOUtils.toString(in);
CharSequenceTranslator obj = new AggregateTranslator(new LookupTranslator(EntityArrays.ISO8859_1_UNESCAPE()),
new LookupTranslator(EntityArrays.HTML40_EXTENDED_UNESCAPE())
);
unescapeHtml4 = obj.translate(unescapeHtml4);
StringReader readerInput= new StringReader(unescapeHtml4);
InputSource is = new InputSource(readerInput);
Document doc = parser.parse(is);

Parsing xml file contents without knowing xml file structure

I've been working on learning some new tech using java to parse files and for the msot part it's going well. However, I'm at a lost as to how I could parse an xml file to where the structure is not known upon receipt. Lots of examples of how to do so if you know the structure (getElementByTagName seems to be the way to go), but no dynamic options, at least not that I've found.
So the tl;dr version of this question, how can I parse an xml file where I cannot rely on knowing it's structure?

Well the parsing part is easy; like helderdarocha stated in the comments, the parser only requires valid XML, it does not care about the structure. You can use Java's standard DocumentBuilder to obtain a Document:
InputStream in = new FileInputStream(...);
Document doc = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(in);
(If you're parsing multiple documents, you can keep reusing the same DocumentBuilder.)
Then you can start with the root document element and use familiar DOM methods from there on out:
Element root = doc.getDocumentElement(); // perform DOM operations starting here.
As for processing it, well it really depends on what you want to do with it, but you can use the methods of Node like getFirstChild() and getNextSibling() to iterate through children and process as you see fit based on structure, tags, and attributes.
Consider the following example:
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
public class XML {
public static void main (String[] args) throws Exception {
String xml = "<objects><circle color='red'/><circle color='green'/><rectangle>hello</rectangle><glumble/></objects>";
// parse
InputStream in = new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.getBytes("utf-8"));
Document doc = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(in);
// process
Node objects = doc.getDocumentElement();
for (Node object = objects.getFirstChild(); object != null; object = object.getNextSibling()) {
if (object instanceof Element) {
Element e = (Element)object;
if (e.getTagName().equalsIgnoreCase("circle")) {
String color = e.getAttribute("color");
System.out.println("It's a " + color + " circle!");
} else if (e.getTagName().equalsIgnoreCase("rectangle")) {
String text = e.getTextContent();
System.out.println("It's a rectangle that says \"" + text + "\".");
} else {
System.out.println("I don't know what a " + e.getTagName() + " is for.");
}
}
}
}
}
The input XML document (hard-coded for example) is:
<objects>
<circle color='red'/>
<circle color='green'/>
<rectangle>hello</rectangle>
<glumble/>
</objects>
The output is:
It's a red circle!
It's a green circle!
It's a rectangle that says "hello".
I don't know what a glumble is for.

Update XML using XMLStreamWriter

I have a large XML and I want to update a particular node of the XML (like removing duplicate nodes).
As the XML is huge I considered using the STAX api class - XMLStreamReader. I first read the XML using XMLStreamReader. I stored the read data in user objects and manipulated these user objects to remove duplicates.
Now I want to put this updated user object back into my original XML. What I thought is that I can marshall the user object to a string and place the string at the right position in my input xml. But I am not able to achieve it using the STAX class - XMLStreamWriter
Can this be achieved using XMLStreamWriter? Please suggest.
If no, they please suggest an alternative approach to my problem.
My main concern is memory as I cannot load such huge XMLs into our project server's memory which is shared across multiple processes. Hence I do not want use DOM because this will use lot of memory to load these huge XML.

If you need to alter a particular value like text content /tag name etc. STAX might help. It would also help in removing few elements using createFilteredReader
Below code renames Name to AuthorName and adds a comment
public class StAx {
public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException,
XMLStreamException {
String filename = "HelloWorld.xml";
try (InputStream in = new FileInputStream(filename);
OutputStream out = System.out;) {
XMLInputFactory factory = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
XMLOutputFactory xof = XMLOutputFactory.newInstance();
XMLEventFactory ef = XMLEventFactory.newInstance();
XMLEventReader reader = factory.createXMLEventReader(filename, in);
XMLEventWriter writer = xof.createXMLEventWriter(out);
while (reader.hasNext()) {
XMLEvent event = (XMLEvent) reader.next();
if (event.isCharacters()) {
String data = event.asCharacters().getData();
if (data.contains("Hello")) {
String replace = data.replace("Hello", "Oh");
event = ef.createCharacters(replace);
}
writer.add(event);
} else if (event.isStartElement()) {
StartElement s = event.asStartElement();
String tagName = s.getName().getLocalPart();
if (tagName.equals("Name")) {
String newName = "Author" + tagName;
event = ef.createStartElement(new QName(newName), null,
null);
writer.add(event);
writer.add(ef.createCharacters("\n "));
event = ef.createComment("auto generated comment");
writer.add(event);
} else {
writer.add(event);
}
} else {
writer.add(event);
}
}
writer.flush();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
Input
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<BookCatalogue>
<Book>
<Title>HelloLord</Title>
<Name>
<first>New</first>
<last>Earth</last>
</Name>
<ISBN>12345</ISBN>
</Book>
<Book>
<Title>HelloWord</Title>
<Name>
<first>New</first>
<last>Moon</last>
</Name>
<ISBN>12346</ISBN>
</Book>
</BookCatalogue>
Output
<?xml version="1.0"?><BookCatalogue>
<Book>
<Title>OhLord</Title>
<AuthorName>
<!--auto generated comment-->
<first>New</first>
<last>Earth</last>
</AuthorName>
<ISBN>12345</ISBN>
</Book>
<Book>
<Title>OhWord</Title>
<AuthorName>
<!--auto generated comment-->
<first>New</first>
<last>Moon</last>
</AuthorName>
<ISBN>12346</ISBN>
</Book>
</BookCatalogue>
As you can see things gets really complicated when modification is much more than this like swapping two nodes deleting one node based on state of few other node : delete All Books with price more than average price
Best solution in this case is to produce resulting xml using xslt transformation

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 return XML from web service

This may be one of the insane / stupid / dumb / lengthy questions as I am newbie to web services.
I want to write a web service which will return answer in XML format (I am using my service for YUI autocomplete). I am using Eclipse and Axis2 and following http://www.softwareagility.gr/index.php?q=node/21
I want response in following format
<codes>
<code value="Pegfilgrastim"/>
<code value="Peggs"/>
<code value="Peggy"/>
<code value="Peginterferon alfa-2 b"/>
<code value="Pegram"/>
</codes>
Number of code elements may vary depending on response.
Till now I tried following ways
1) Create XML using String buffer and return the string.(I am providing partial code to avoid confusion)
public String myService ()
{
// Some other stuff
StringBuffer outputXML = new StringBuffer();
outputXML.append("<?xml version='1.0' standalone='yes'?>");
outputXML.append("<codes>");
while(SOME_CONDITION)
{
// Some business logic
outputXML.append("<code value=\""+tempStr+"\">"+"</code>");
}
outputXML.append("</codes>");
return (outputXML.toString());
}
It gives following response with unwanted <ns:myServiceResponse> and <ns:return> element.
<ns:myServiceResponse>
<ns:return>
<?xml version='1.0' standalone='yes'?><codes><code value="Peg-shaped teeth"></code><code value="Pegaspargase"></code><code value="Pegfilgrastim"></code><code value="Peggs"></code><code value="Peggy"></code><code value="Peginterferon alfa-2 b"></code><code value="Pegram"></code></codes>
</ns:return>
</ns:findTermsResponse>
But it didnt work with YUI autocomplete (May be because it required response in format mentioned above)
2) Using DocumentBuilderFactory :
Like
public Element myService ()
{
DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder docBuilder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = docBuilder.newDocument();
Element codes = doc.createElement("codes");
while(SOME_CONDITION)
{
// Some business logic
Element code = doc.createElement("code");
code.setAttribute("value", tempStr);
codes.appendChild(code);
}
return(codes);
}
Got following error
org.apache.axis2.AxisFault: Mapping qname not fond for the package: com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom
3) Using servlet : I tried to get same response using simple servlet and it worked. Here is my servlet
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException
{
StringBuffer outputXML = new StringBuffer();
response.setContentType("text/xml");
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
outputXML.append("<?xml version='1.0' standalone='yes'?>");
outputXML.append("<codes>");
while(SOME_CONDITION)
{
// Some business logic
outputXML.append("<code value=\"" + tempStr + "\">" + "</code>");
}
outputXML.append("</codes>");
out.println(outputXML.toString());
}
It gave response same as mentioned above and it worked with YUI autocomplete without any extra tag.
Please can you tell how can I get XML response without any unwanted elements ?
Thanks.

Axis2 is for delivering Objects back to the caller. Thats why it adds extra stuff to the response even it is a simple String object.
Using the second approach your service returns a complex Java object (Element instance) that is for describing an XML fragment. This way the caller has to be aware of this object to be able to deserialize it and restore the Java object that contains XML data.
The third approach is the simplest and best in your case regarding the return type: it doesn't return a serialized Java object, only the plain xml text. Of course you could use DocumentBuilder to prepare the XML, but in the end you have to make String of it by calling the appropriate getXml(), asXml() method (or kind of...)

Finally got it work though I am not able to remove unwanted element. (I don't bother till all things are in place). I used AXIOM to generate response.
public OMElement myService ()
{
OMFactory fac = OMAbstractFactory.getOMFactory();
OMNamespace omNs = fac.createOMNamespace("", "");
OMElement codes = fac.createOMElement("codes", omNs);
while(SOME_CONDITION)
{
OMElement code = fac.createOMElement("code", null, codes);
OMAttribute value = fac.createOMAttribute("value", null, tempStr);
code.addAttribute(value);
}
return(codes);
}
Links : 1) http://songcuulong.com/public/html/webservice/create_ws.html
2) http://sv.tomicom.ac.jp/~koba/axis2-1.3/docs/xdocs/1_3/rest-ws.html

I think you cannot return your custom xml with Axis. It will wrap it into its envelope anyways.