Develop Reference

How to transform each xml node with Saxon XSLT?

How can I use Saxon xslt transformation library to convert an xml file that contains many nodes to a plain csv string? Means, I want Saxon to concatenate each employee entry as csv, and put them all together.
This is the saxon setup, but I don't know how I could not transform an input xml file with it:
//false = does not required a feature from a licensed version of Saxon.
Processor processor = new Processor(false);
XsltCompiler compiler = processor.newXsltCompiler();
compiler.compile(new StreamSource("transformation.xslt"));
Serializer serializer = processor.newSerializer();
serializer.setOutputProperty(Serializer.Property.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
//TODO
//String result = serializer...serializeNodeToString();
I want to transform the following xml:
<employees stage="test">
<employee>
<details>
<name>Joe</name>
<age>34</age>
</details>
<address>
<street>test</street>
<nr>12</nr>
</address>
</employee>
<employee>
<address>....</address>
<details>
<!-- note the changed order of elements! -->
<age>24</age>
<name>Sam</name>
</details>
</employee>
</employees>
The result string should contain the following (one big string with linebreak separated csv lines):
test,Joe,34,test,12\n
test,Sam,24,...\n
Xslt might be similar to:
<xsl:transform version="3.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:template match="employee">
<xsl:value-of select="name"/>
<xsl:value-of select="age"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:transform>

The XSLT template can be modified as below. The elements can be selected according to the required sequence.
<xsl:template match="employee">
<xsl:value-of select="ancestor::employees/#stage, details/name, details/age, address/street, address/nr" separator=", " />
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
</xsl:template>
After replacing the ... with some dummy values in the <address> element the following output is generated using the above template.
test, Joe, 34, test, 12
test, Sam, 24, test1, 123
For transforming the XML (using XSLT) in Java, I use the following code snippet most of the time. This method returns the transformed XML as a String. The required library is saxon9he.jar. You may have to upgrade the library version for using with XSLT 3.0
public static String transformXML(String xml, InputStream xslFile) {
String outputXML = null;
try {
System.setProperty("javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory", "net.sf.saxon.TransformerFactoryImpl");
TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer(new StreamSource(xslFile));
Source xmlStream = new StreamSource(new StringReader(xml));
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
Result result = new StreamResult(writer);
transformer.transform(xmlStream, result);
outputXML = writer.getBuffer().toString();
} catch (TransformerConfigurationException tce) {
tce.printStackTrace();
} catch (TransformerException te) {
te.printStackTrace();
}
return outputXML;
}

Xpath - Java - Extracting multiple namespaces from XML

I am working on a parser written in Java. I can receive XML feeds from various locations, with various contents. I need to extract all the namespaces from the feed, to call this or that according to the feed. I have some trouble obtaining this in Java, and i am not really sure where the issue is.
Let's consider this XML:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type='text/xsl' href='new.xsl'?>
<test xmlns:mynsone="http://www.ns.com/test" xmlns:demons="http://www.demons.com/test">
<p xmlns:domain="http://www.toto.com/test">
this is a test.
</p>
</test>
In order to test my xPath expression (i am rather new to it), i wrote a little .xsl script applied to that XML:
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output
method="html"
encoding="ISO-8859-1"
doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML//EN"
doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xhtml11-20010531"
indent="yes" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:for-each select="//namespace::*">
<xsl:value-of select="." />
<xsl:text> </xsl:text><br />
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
And this correctly provides me the list of namespaces encountered iterating the nodes:
http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace
http://www.demons.com/test
http://www.ns.com/test
http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace
http://www.demons.com/test
http://www.ns.com/test
http://www.toto.com/test
Now i get back to Java: here is the code i use.
InputStream file = url.openStream();
DocumentBuilderFactory builderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder builder = builderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
org.w3c.dom.Document xmlDocument = builder.parse(file);
XPath xPath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
String expression = "//namespace::*";
System.out.println(expression);
NodeList nodelist = (NodeList) xPath.compile(expression).evaluate(xmlDocument, XPathConstants.NODESET);
for (int k = 0; k < nodelist.getLength(); k++)
{
Node mynode = nodelist.item(k);
System.out.println(mynode.toString());
}
And here is the result i obtain:
xmlns:mynsone="http://www.ns.com/test"
org.apache.xml.dtm.ref.dom2dtm.DOM2DTMdefaultNamespaceDeclarationNode#7dbb8ca4
xmlns:domain="http://www.toto.com/test"
Therefore, the "demons" namespace is not returned. The problem is that if i put several namespaces on 1 node, only 1 is return in Java, whereas on the XSL script all are displayed.
I hope i maed myself clear; i spent the past days on the web browsing for examples, and i dont know if im really close but just missing a little something or if my expression is simply not proper..
Thanks in advance.
OK so i eventually used xPath 2.0 to do it, using saxon-HE 9.4:
public static boolean detectGeoRssNamespace(InputStream sourceFeed) {
try {
if (sourceFeed.markSupported()) {
sourceFeed.reset();
}
String objectModel = NamespaceConstant.OBJECT_MODEL_SAXON;
System.setProperty("javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory:"+NamespaceConstant.OBJECT_MODEL_SAXON, "net.sf.saxon.xpath.XPathFactoryImpl");
XPathFactory xpathFactory = XPathFactory.newInstance(objectModel);
XPath xpath = xpathFactory.newXPath();
InputSource is = new InputSource(sourceFeed);
SAXSource ss = new SAXSource(is);
NodeInfo doc = ((XPathEvaluator)xpath).setSource(ss);
String xpathExpressionStr = "distinct-values(//*[name()!=local-name()]/ concat('prefix=', substring-before(name(), ':'), '&uri=', namespace-uri()))";
XPathExpression xpathExpression = xpath.compile(xpathExpressionStr);
List nodelist = (List)xpathExpression.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);
System.out.println("<output>");
Iterator iter = nodelist.iterator();
while ( iter.hasNext() ) {
Object line = (Object)iter.next();
System.out.println(line.toString());
}
System.out.println("</output>");
} catch (XPathFactoryConfigurationException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (XPathException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}

what if you extract this namespaces to different xml elements.
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output
method="html"
encoding="ISO-8859-1"
doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML//EN"
doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xhtml11-20010531"
indent="yes" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:for-each select="//namespace::*">
<namespace>
<xsl:value-of select="." />
</namespace>
<xsl:text> </xsl:text><br />
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Question was solved using xPath 2.0 (code included in question)

Generate/get xpath from XML node java

I'm interested in advice/pseudocode code/explanation rather than actual implementation.
I'd like to go through XML document, all of its nodes
Check the node for attribute existence
Case if node doesn't have attribute, get/generate String with value of its xpath
Case if node does have attributes, iterate through attribute list and create xpath for each attribute including the node as well.
Edit
My reason for doing this is: I'm writing automated tests in Jmeter, so for every request I need to verify that request actually did its job so I'm asserting results by getting nodes values with Xpath.
When the request is small it's not a problem to create asserts by hand, but for larger ones it's really a pain.
I'm looking for Java approach.
Goal
My goal is to achieve following from this example XML file :
<root>
<elemA>one</elemA>
<elemA attribute1='first' attribute2='second'>two</elemA>
<elemB>three</elemB>
<elemA>four</elemA>
<elemC>
<elemB>five</elemB>
</elemC>
</root>
to produce the following :
//root[1]/elemA[1]='one'
//root[1]/elemA[2]='two'
//root[1]/elemA[2][#attribute1='first']
//root[1]/elemA[2][#attribute2='second']
//root[1]/elemB[1]='three'
//root[1]/elemA[3]='four'
//root[1]/elemC[1]/elemB[1]='five'
Explained :
If node value/text is not null/zero, get xpath , add = 'nodevalue' for assertion purpose
If node has attributes create assert for them too
Update
I found this example, it doesn't produce the correct results, but I'm looking something like this:
http://www.coderanch.com/how-to/java/SAXCreateXPath

Update:
#c0mrade has updated his question. Here is a solution to it:
This XSLT transformation:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
<xsl:variable name="vApos">'</xsl:variable>
<xsl:template match="*[#* or not(*)] ">
<xsl:if test="not(*)">
<xsl:apply-templates select="ancestor-or-self::*" mode="path"/>
<xsl:value-of select="concat('=',$vApos,.,$vApos)"/>
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*|*"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*" mode="path">
<xsl:value-of select="concat('/',name())"/>
<xsl:variable name="vnumPrecSiblings" select=
"count(preceding-sibling::*[name()=name(current())])"/>
<xsl:if test="$vnumPrecSiblings">
<xsl:value-of select="concat('[', $vnumPrecSiblings +1, ']')"/>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="#*">
<xsl:apply-templates select="../ancestor-or-self::*" mode="path"/>
<xsl:value-of select="concat('[#',name(), '=',$vApos,.,$vApos,']')"/>
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
when applied on the provided XML document:
<root>
<elemA>one</elemA>
<elemA attribute1='first' attribute2='second'>two</elemA>
<elemB>three</elemB>
<elemA>four</elemA>
<elemC>
<elemB>five</elemB>
</elemC>
</root>
produces exactly the wanted, correct result:
/root/elemA='one'
/root/elemA[2]='two'
/root/elemA[2][#attribute1='first']
/root/elemA[2][#attribute2='second']
/root/elemB='three'
/root/elemA[3]='four'
/root/elemC/elemB='five'
When applied to the newly-provided document by #c0mrade:
<root>
<elemX serial="kefw90234kf2esda9231">
<id>89734</id>
</elemX>
</root>
again the correct result is produced:
/root/elemX[#serial='kefw90234kf2esda9231']
/root/elemX/id='89734'
Explanation:
Only elements that have no children elements, or have attributes are matched and processed.
For any such element, if it doesn't have children-elements all of its ancestor-or self elements are processed in a specific mode, named 'path'. Then the "='theValue'" part is output and then a NL character.
All attributes of the matched element are then processed.
Then finally, templates are applied to all children-elements.
Processing an element in the 'path' mode is simple: A / character and the name of the element are output. Then, if there are preceding siblings with the same name, a "[numPrecSiblings+1]` part is output.
Processing of attributes is simple: First all ancestor-or-self:: elements of its parent are processed in 'path' mode, then the [attrName=attrValue] part is output, followed by a NL character.
Do note:
Names that are in a namespace are displayed without any problem and in their initial readable form.
To aid readability, an index of [1] is never displayed.
Below is my initial answer (may be ignored)
Here is a pure XSLT 1.0 solution:
Below is a sample xml document and a stylesheet that takes a node-set parameter and produces one valid XPath expression for every member-node.
stylesheet (buildPath.xsl):
<xsl:stylesheet version='1.0'
xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'
xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
>
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:variable name="theParmNodes" select="//namespace::*[local-name() =
'myNamespace']"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:variable name="theResult">
<xsl:for-each select="$theParmNodes">
<xsl:variable name="theNode" select="."/>
<xsl:for-each select="$theNode |
$theNode/ancestor-or-self::node()[..]">
<xsl:element name="slash">/</xsl:element>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="self::*">
<xsl:element name="nodeName">
<xsl:value-of select="name()"/>
<xsl:variable name="thisPosition"
select="count(preceding-sibling::*[name(current()) =
name()])"/>
<xsl:variable name="numFollowing"
select="count(following-sibling::*[name(current()) =
name()])"/>
<xsl:if test="$thisPosition + $numFollowing > 0">
<xsl:value-of select="concat('[', $thisPosition +
1, ']')"/>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise> <!-- This node is not an element -->
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="count(. | ../#*) = count(../#*)">
<!-- Attribute -->
<xsl:element name="nodeName">
<xsl:value-of select="concat('#',name())"/>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="self::text()"> <!-- Text -->
<xsl:element name="nodeName">
<xsl:value-of select="'text()'"/>
<xsl:variable name="thisPosition"
select="count(preceding-sibling::text())"/>
<xsl:variable name="numFollowing"
select="count(following-sibling::text())"/>
<xsl:if test="$thisPosition + $numFollowing > 0">
<xsl:value-of select="concat('[', $thisPosition +
1, ']')"/>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="self::processing-instruction()">
<!-- Processing Instruction -->
<xsl:element name="nodeName">
<xsl:value-of select="'processing-instruction()'"/>
<xsl:variable name="thisPosition"
select="count(preceding-sibling::processing-instruction())"/>
<xsl:variable name="numFollowing"
select="count(following-sibling::processing-instruction())"/>
<xsl:if test="$thisPosition + $numFollowing > 0">
<xsl:value-of select="concat('[', $thisPosition +
1, ']')"/>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="self::comment()"> <!-- Comment -->
<xsl:element name="nodeName">
<xsl:value-of select="'comment()'"/>
<xsl:variable name="thisPosition"
select="count(preceding-sibling::comment())"/>
<xsl:variable name="numFollowing"
select="count(following-sibling::comment())"/>
<xsl:if test="$thisPosition + $numFollowing > 0">
<xsl:value-of select="concat('[', $thisPosition +
1, ']')"/>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:when>
<!-- Namespace: -->
<xsl:when test="count(. | ../namespace::*) =
count(../namespace::*)">
<xsl:variable name="apos">'</xsl:variable>
<xsl:element name="nodeName">
<xsl:value-of select="concat('namespace::*',
'[local-name() = ', $apos, local-name(), $apos, ']')"/>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:when>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:value-of select="msxsl:node-set($theResult)"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
xml source (buildPath.xml):
<!-- top level Comment -->
<root>
<nodeA>textA</nodeA>
<nodeA id="nodeA-2">
<?myProc ?>
xxxxxxxx
<nodeB/>
<nodeB xmlns:myNamespace="myTestNamespace">
<!-- Comment within /root/nodeA[2]/nodeB[2] -->
<nodeC/>
<!-- 2nd Comment within /root/nodeA[2]/nodeB[2] -->
</nodeB>
yyyyyyy
<nodeB/>
<?myProc2 ?>
</nodeA>
</root>
<!-- top level Comment -->
Result:
/root/nodeA[2]/nodeB[2]/namespace::*[local-name() = 'myNamespace']
/root/nodeA[2]/nodeB[2]/nodeC/namespace::*[local-name() =
'myNamespace']

Here is how this can be done with SAX:
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.XMLReader;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;
public class FragmentContentHandler extends DefaultHandler {
private String xPath = "/";
private XMLReader xmlReader;
private FragmentContentHandler parent;
private StringBuilder characters = new StringBuilder();
private Map<String, Integer> elementNameCount = new HashMap<String, Integer>();
public FragmentContentHandler(XMLReader xmlReader) {
this.xmlReader = xmlReader;
}
private FragmentContentHandler(String xPath, XMLReader xmlReader, FragmentContentHandler parent) {
this(xmlReader);
this.xPath = xPath;
this.parent = parent;
}
#Override
public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes atts) throws SAXException {
Integer count = elementNameCount.get(qName);
if(null == count) {
count = 1;
} else {
count++;
}
elementNameCount.put(qName, count);
String childXPath = xPath + "/" + qName + "[" + count + "]";
int attsLength = atts.getLength();
for(int x=0; x<attsLength; x++) {
System.out.println(childXPath + "[#" + atts.getQName(x) + "='" + atts.getValue(x) + ']');
}
FragmentContentHandler child = new FragmentContentHandler(childXPath, xmlReader, this);
xmlReader.setContentHandler(child);
}
#Override
public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName) throws SAXException {
String value = characters.toString().trim();
if(value.length() > 0) {
System.out.println(xPath + "='" + characters.toString() + "'");
}
xmlReader.setContentHandler(parent);
}
#Override
public void characters(char[] ch, int start, int length) throws SAXException {
characters.append(ch, start, length);
}
}
It can be tested with:
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.XMLReader;
public class Demo {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
SAXParserFactory spf = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
SAXParser sp = spf.newSAXParser();
XMLReader xr = sp.getXMLReader();
xr.setContentHandler(new FragmentContentHandler(xr));
xr.parse(new InputSource(new FileInputStream("input.xml")));
}
}
This will produce the desired output:
//root[1]/elemA[1]='one'
//root[1]/elemA[2][#attribute1='first]
//root[1]/elemA[2][#attribute2='second]
//root[1]/elemA[2]='two'
//root[1]/elemB[1]='three'
//root[1]/elemA[3]='four'
//root[1]/elemC[1]/elemB[1]='five'

With jOOX (a jquery API port to Java, disclaimer - I work for the company behind the library), you can almost achieve what you want in a single statement:
// I'm assuming this:
import static org.joox.JOOX.$;
// And then...
List<String> coolList = $(document).xpath("//*[not(*)]").map(
context -> $(context).xpath() + "='" + $(context).text() + "'"
);
If document is your sample document:
<root>
<elemA>one</elemA>
<elemA attribute1='first' attribute2='second'>two</elemA>
<elemB>three</elemB>
<elemA>four</elemA>
<elemC>
<elemB>five</elemB>
</elemC>
</root>
This will produce
/root[1]/elemA[1]='one'
/root[1]/elemA[2]='two'
/root[1]/elemB[1]='three'
/root[1]/elemA[3]='four'
/root[1]/elemC[1]/elemB[1]='five'
By "almost", I mean that jOOX does not (yet) support matching/mapping attributes. Hence, your attributes will not produce any output. This will be implemented in the near future, though.

private static void buildEntryList( List<String> entries, String parentXPath, Element parent ) {
NamedNodeMap attrs = parent.getAttributes();
for( int i = 0; i < attrs.getLength(); i++ ) {
Attr attr = (Attr)attrs.item( i );
//TODO: escape attr value
entries.add( parentXPath+"[#"+attr.getName()+"='"+attr.getValue()+"']");
}
HashMap<String, Integer> nameMap = new HashMap<String, Integer>();
NodeList children = parent.getChildNodes();
for( int i = 0; i < children.getLength(); i++ ) {
Node child = children.item( i );
if( child instanceof Text ) {
//TODO: escape child value
entries.add( parentXPath+"='"+((Text)child).getData()+"'" );
} else if( child instanceof Element ) {
String childName = child.getNodeName();
Integer nameCount = nameMap.get( childName );
nameCount = nameCount == null ? 1 : nameCount + 1;
nameMap.put( child.getNodeName(), nameCount );
buildEntryList( entries, parentXPath+"/"+childName+"["+nameCount+"]", (Element)child);
}
}
}
public static List<String> getEntryList( Document doc ) {
ArrayList<String> entries = new ArrayList<String>();
Element root = doc.getDocumentElement();
buildEntryList(entries, "/"+root.getNodeName()+"[1]", root );
return entries;
}
This code works with two assumptions: you aren't using namespaces and there are no mixed content elements. The namespace limitation isn't a serious one, but it'd make your XPath expression much harder to read, as every element would be something like *:<name>[namespace-uri()='<nsuri>'][<index>], but otherwise it's easy to implement. Mixed content on the other hand would make the use of xpath very tedious, as you'd have to be able to individually address the second, third and so on text node within an element.

use w3c.dom
go recursively down
for each node there is easy way to get it's xpath: either by storing it as array/list while #2, or via function which goes recursively up until parent is null, then reverses array/list of encountered nodes.
something like that.
UPD:
and concatenate final list in order to get final xpath.
don't think attributes will be a problem.

I've done a similar task once. The main idea used was that you can use indexes of the element in the xpath. For example in the following xml
<root>
<el />
<something />
<el />
</root>
xpath to the second <el/> will be /root[1]/el[2] (xpath indexes are 1-based). This reads as "take the first root, then take the second one from all elements with the name el". So element something does not affect indexing of elements el. So you can in theory create an xpath for each specific element in your xml. In practice I've accomplished this by walking the tree recursevely and remembering information about elements and their indexes along the way.
Creating xpath referencing specific attribute of the element then was just adding '/#attrName' to element's xpath.

I have written a method to return the absolute path of an element in the Practical XML library. To give you an idea of how it works, here's an extract form one of the unit tests:
assertEquals("/root/wargle[2]/zargle",
DomUtil.getAbsolutePath(child3a));
So, you could recurse through the document, apply your tests, and use this to return the XPath. Or, what is probably better, is that you could use the XPath-based assertions from that same library.

I did the exact same thing last week for processing my xml to solr compliant format.
Since you wanted a pseudo code: This is how I accomplished that.
// You can skip the reference to parent and child.
1_ Initialize a custom node object: NodeObjectVO {String nodeName, String path, List attr, NodeObjectVO parent, List child}
2_ Create an empty list
3_ Create a dom representation of xml and iterate thro the node. For each node, get the corresponding information. All the information like Node name,attribute names and value should be readily available from dom object. ( You need to check the dom NodeType, code should ignore processing instruction and plain text nodes.)
// Code Bloat warning.
4_ The only tricky part is get path. I created an iterative utility method to get the xpath string from NodeElement. (While(node.Parent != null ) { path+=node.parent.nodeName}.
(You can also achieve this by maintaining a global path variable, that keeps track of the parent path for each iteration.)
5_ In the setter method of setAttributes (List), I will append the object's path with all the available attributes. (one path with all available attributes. Not a list of path with each possible combination of attributes. You might want to do someother way. )
6_ Add the NodeObjectVO to the list.
7_ Now we have a flat (not hierrarchial) list of custom Node Objects, that have all the information I need.
(Note: Like I mentioned, I maintain parent child relationship, you should probably skip that part. There is a possibility of code bloating, especially while getparentpath. For small xml this was not a problem, but this is a concern for large xml).

How do I remove namespaces from xml, using java dom?

I have the following code
DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory_ = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
Document doc_;
DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory_.newDocumentBuilder();
StringReader reader = new StringReader(s);
InputSource inputSource = new InputSource(reader);
doc_ = dBuilder.parse(inputSource);
doc_.getDocumentElement().normalize();
Then I can do
doc_.getDocumentElement();
and get my first element but the problem is instead of being job the element is tns:job.
I know about and have tried to use:
dbFactory_.setNamespaceAware(true);
but that is just not what I'm looking for, I need something to completely get rid of namespaces.
Any help would be appreciated,
Thanks,
Josh

Use the Regex function. This will solve this issue:
public static String removeXmlStringNamespaceAndPreamble(String xmlString) {
return xmlString.replaceAll("(<\\?[^<]*\\?>)?", ""). /* remove preamble */
replaceAll("xmlns.*?(\"|\').*?(\"|\')", "") /* remove xmlns declaration */
.replaceAll("(<)(\\w+:)(.*?>)", "$1$3") /* remove opening tag prefix */
.replaceAll("(</)(\\w+:)(.*?>)", "$1$3"); /* remove closing tags prefix */
}

For Element and Attribute nodes:
Node node = ...;
String name = node.getLocalName();
will give you the local part of the node's name.
See Node.getLocalName()

You can pre-process XML to remove all namespaces, if you absolutely must do so. I'd recommend against it, as removing namespaces from an XML document is in essence comparable to removing namespaces from a programming framework or library - you risk name clashes and lose the ability to differentiate between once-distinct elements. However, it's your funeral. ;-)
This XSLT transformation removes all namespaces from any XML document.
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="node()">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node()|#*" />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:element name="{local-name()}">
<xsl:apply-templates select="node()|#*" />
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="#*">
<xsl:attribute name="{local-name()}">
<xsl:apply-templates select="node()|#*" />
</xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Apply it to your XML document. Java examples for doing such a thing should be plenty, even on this site. The resulting document will be exactly of the same structure and layout, just without namespaces.

Rather than
dbFactory_.setNamespaceAware(true);
Use
dbFactory_.setNamespaceAware(false);
Although I agree with Tomalak: in general, namespaces are more helpful than harmful. Why don't you want to use them?
Edit: this answer doesn't answer the OP's question, which was how to get rid of namespace prefixes. RD01 provided the correct answer to that.

Tomalak, one fix of your XSLT (in 3rd template):
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="node()">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node() | #*" />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:element name="{local-name()}">
<xsl:apply-templates select="node() | #*" />
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="#*">
<!-- Here! -->
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node() | #*" />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

public static void wipeRootNamespaces(Document xml) {
Node root = xml.getDocumentElement();
NodeList rootchildren = root.getChildNodes();
Element newroot = xml.createElement(root.getNodeName());
for (int i=0;i<rootchildren.getLength();i++) {
newroot.appendChild(rootchildren.item(i).cloneNode(true));
}
xml.replaceChild(newroot, root);
}

The size of the input xml also needs to be considered when choosing the solution. For large xmls, in the size of ~100k, possible if your input is from a web service, you also need to consider the garbage collection implications when you manipulate a large string. We used String.replaceAll before, and it caused frequent OOM in production with a 1.5G heap size because of the way replaceAll is implemented.
You can reference http://app-inf.blogspot.com/2013/04/pitfalls-of-handling-large-string.html for our findings.
I am not sure how XSLT deals with large String objects, but we ended up parsing the string manualy to remove prefixes in one parse to avoid creating additional large java objects.
public static String removePrefixes(String input1) {
String ret = null;
int strStart = 0;
boolean finished = false;
if (input1 != null) {
//BE CAREFUL : allocate enough size for StringBuffer to avoid expansion
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(input1.length());
while (!finished) {
int start = input1.indexOf('<', strStart);
int end = input1.indexOf('>', strStart);
if (start != -1 && end != -1) {
// Appending anything before '<', including '<'
sb.append(input1, strStart, start + 1);
String tag = input1.substring(start + 1, end);
if (tag.charAt(0) == '/') {
// Appending '/' if it is "</"
sb.append('/');
tag = tag.substring(1);
}
int colon = tag.indexOf(':');
int space = tag.indexOf(' ');
if (colon != -1 && (space == -1 || colon < space)) {
tag = tag.substring(colon + 1);
}
// Appending tag with prefix removed, and ">"
sb.append(tag).append('>');
strStart = end + 1;
} else {
finished = true;
}
}
//BE CAREFUL : use new String(sb) instead of sb.toString for large Strings
ret = new String(sb);
}
return ret;
}

Instead of using TransformerFactory and then calling transform on it (which was injecting the empty namespace, I transformed as follows:
OutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(new File(xMLFilePath));
OutputFormat outputFormat = new OutputFormat(doc, "UTF-8", true);
outputFormat.setOmitComments(true);
outputFormat.setLineWidth(0);
XMLSerializer serializer = new XMLSerializer(outputStream, outputFormat);
serializer.serialize(doc);
outputStream.close();

I also faced the namespace issue and was unable to read XML file in java. below is the solution:
DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
factory.setNamespaceAware(false);// this is imp code that will deactivate namespace in xml
DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = builder.parse("XML/"+ fileName);

Changing node name of xml-node with Java

I have following scenario: I have a XML-Document, e.g. like this
<someRootElement>
<tag1>
<tag2
someKey=someValue
someKey2=someValue2
/>
<tag3/>
<tag4
newKey=newValue
newKey2=newValue2
/>
</tag1>
</someRootElement>
Now I want the parent tag1 to be called reallyCoolTag without losing the childnodes.
I tried the following, but it unfortunately doesn't work as I wish it would (but I do know why, b/c it is missing something, I guess):
// the new element:
Element neu = doc.createElement( newValue );
// append it to the root:
root.appendChild( neu );
// get all the child nodes:
NamedNodeMap nnm = nodes.item(i).getAttributes();
for( int dg = 0; dg < nnm.getLength(); dg++ ){
neu.setAttribute( nnm.item( dg ).getNodeName(),
nnm.item( dg ).getNodeValue() );
}
//---------------------------------------------------------
// HERE I GUESS I AM MISSING THE PART WHERE THE CHILD NODES
// ARE BEING APPENDED TO THE NEW NODE?????
//---------------------------------------------------------
// nodes.item(i) := the old value (nodes := is a NodeList
root.replaceChild( neu, nodes.item(i));
TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer();
DOMSource source = new DOMSource( doc );
StreamResult result = new StreamResult( xml );
transformer.transform( source, result );
nodes.item( i ).getParentNode().removeChild( nodes.item(i) );
Now this does work to a certain extend, as I mentioned, I guess I am missing the part where the child nodes are being appened, but what I actually wanted to know is, whether there is a really short way to rename the parent node without having to copy everything and replace the whole thing?
Thnx in advance!!!

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

You could use an XSL Transformation (XSLT) for this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />
<xsl:template match="*"> <!-- match anything -->
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:copy-of select="#*" />
<xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="tag1"> <!-- switch the element name -->
<xsl:element name="reallyCoolTag">
<xsl:copy-of select="#*" />
<xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
This can be used with the javax.xml.transform package (Java 1.4 and above):
TransformerFactory transFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = transFactory.newTransformer(new StreamSource(
new File("RenameTag.xslt")));
transformer
.transform(new DOMSource(document), new StreamResult(System.out));
See DOMResult if you want a Document as the output.

Your tag1 is invalid. It doesn't have closing >. Also the attributes should be quoted. It should look like this,
<someRootElement>
<tag1>
<tag2
someKey="someValue"
someKey2="someValue2"
/>
<tag3/>
<tag4
newKey="newValue"
newKey2="newValue2"
/>
</tag1>
</someRootElement>
Try with the corrected XML. It should work.

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

As you did get the attributes:
NamedNodeMap nnm = nodes.item(i).getAttributes();
and you added these attributes to the new element,
You should get the children of nodes.item(i) and set them in the new node.
You can use for ex.:
neu.addContent(nodes.item(i).getChildren());