I have this XML file which doesn't have a root node. Other than manually adding a "fake" root element, is there any way I would be able to parse an XML file in Java? Thanks.
I suppose you could create a new implementation of InputStream that wraps the one you'll be parsing from. This implementation would return the bytes of the opening root tag before the bytes from the wrapped stream and the bytes of the closing root tag afterwards. That would be fairly simple to do.
I may be faced with this problem too. Legacy code, eh?
Ian.
Edit: You could also look at java.io.SequenceInputStream which allows you to append streams to one another. You would need to put your prefix and suffix in byte arrays and wrap them in ByteArrayInputStreams but it's all fairly straightforward.
Your XML document needs a root xml element to be considered well formed. Without this you will not be able to parse it with an xml parser.
One way is to provide your own dummy wrapper without touching the original 'xml' (the not well formed 'xml') Need the word for that:
Syntax
<!DOCTYPE some_root_elem SYSTEM "/home/ego/some.dtd"
[
<!ENTITY entity-name "Some value to be inserted at the entity">
]
Example:
<!DOCTYPE dummy [
<!ENTITY data SYSTEM "http://wherever-my-data-is">
]>
<dummy>
&data;
</dummy>
You could use another parser like Jsoup. It can parse XML without a root.
I think even if any API would have an option for this, it will only return you the first node of the "XML" which will look like a root and discard the rest.
So the answer is probably to do it yourself. Scanner or StringTokenizer might do the trick.
Maybe some html parsers might help, they are usually less strict.
Here's what I did:
There's an old java.io.SequenceInputStream class, which is so old that it takes Enumeration rather than List or such.
With it, you can prepend and append the root element tags (<div> and </div> in my case) around your no-root XML stream. (You shouldn't do it by concatenating Strings due to performance and memory reasons.)
public void tryExtractHighestHeader(ParserContext context)
{
String xhtmlString = context.getBody();
if (xhtmlString == null || "".equals(xhtmlString))
return;
// The XHTML needs to be wrapped, because it has no root element.
ByteArrayInputStream divStart = new ByteArrayInputStream("<div>".getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
ByteArrayInputStream divEnd = new ByteArrayInputStream("</div>".getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
ByteArrayInputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream(xhtmlString.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
Enumeration<InputStream> streams = new IteratorEnumeration(Arrays.asList(new InputStream[]{divStart, is, divEnd}).iterator());
try (SequenceInputStream wrapped = new SequenceInputStream(streams);) {
DocumentBuilderFactory builderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder builder = builderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document xmlDocument = builder.parse(wrapped);
From here you can do whatever you like, but keep in mind the extra element.
XPath xPath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
}
catch (Exception e) {
throw new RuntimeException("Failed parsing XML: " + e.getMessage());
}
}
Related
I'm trying to read an xml file on from an android app using XOM as the XML library. I'm trying this:
Builder parser = new Builder();
Document doc = parser.build(context.openFileInput(XML_FILE_LOCATION));
But I'm getting nu.xom.ParsingException: Premature end of file. even when the file is empty.
I need to parse a very simple XML file, and I'm ready to use another library instead of XOM so let me know if there's a better one. or just a solution to the problem using XOM.
In case it helps, I'm using xerces to get the parser.
------Edit-----
PS: The purpose of this wasn't to parse an empty file, the file just happened to be empty on the first run which showed this error.
If you follow this post to the end, it seems that this has to do with xerces and the fact that its an empty file, and they didn't reach a solution on xerces side.
So I handled the issue as follows:
Document doc = null;
try {
Builder parser = new Builder();
doc = parser.build(context.openFileInput(XML_FILE_LOCATION));
}catch (ParsingException ex) { //other catch blocks are required for other exceptions.
//fails to open the file with a parsing error.
//I create a new root element and a new document.
//I fill them with xml data (else where in the code) and save them.
Element root = new Element("root");
doc = new Document(root);
}
And then I can do whatever I want with doc. and you can add extra checks to make sure that the cause is really an empty file (like check the file size as indicated by one of sam's comments on the question).
An empty file is not a well-formed XML document. Throwing a ParsingException is the right thing to do here.
For one of our applications, I've written a utility that uses java's DOM parser. It basically takes an XML file, parses it and then processes the data using one of the following methods to actually retrieve the data.
getElementByTagName()
getElementAtIndex()
getFirstChild()
getNextSibling()
getTextContent()
Now i have to do the same thing but i am wondering whether it would be better to use an XSLT stylesheet. The organisation that sends us the XML file keeps changing their schema meaning that we have to change our code to cater for these shema changes. Im not very familiar with XSLT process so im trying to find out whether im better of using XSLT stylesheets rather than "manual parsing".
The reason XSLT stylesheets looks attractive is that i think that if the schema for the XML file changes i will only need to change the stylesheet? Is this correct?
The other thing i would like to know is which of the two (XSLT transformer or DOM parser) is better performance wise. For the manual option, i just use the DOM parser to parse the xml file. How does the XSLT transformer actually parse the file? Does it include additional overhead compared to manually parsing the xml file? The reason i ask is that performance is important because of the nature of the data i will be processing.
Any advice?
Thanks
Edit
Basically what I am currently doing is parsing an xml file and process the values in some of the xml elements. I don't transform the xml file into any other format. I just extract some value, extract a row from an Oracle database and save a new row into a different table. The xml file I parse just contains reference values I use to retrieve some data from the database.
Is xslt not suitable in this scenario? Is there a better approach that I can use to avoid code changes if the schema changes?
Edit 2
Apologies for not being clear enough about what i am doing with the XML data. Basically there is an XML file which contains some information. I extract this information from the XML file and use it to retrieve more information from a local database. The data in the xml file is more like reference keys for the data i need in the database. I then take the content i extracted from the XML file plus the content i retrieved from the database using a specific key from the XML file and save that data into another database table.
The problem i have is that i know how to write a DOM parser to extract the information i need from the XML file but i was wondering whether using an XSLT stylesheet was a better option as i wouldnt have to change the code if the schema changes.
Reading the responses below it sounds like XSLT is only used for transorming and XML file to another XML file or some other format. Given that i dont intend to transform the XML file, there is probably no need to add the additional overhead of parsing the XSLT stylesheet as well as the XML file.
Transforming XML documents into other formats is XSLT's reason for being. You can use XSLT to output HTML, JSON, another XML document, or anything else you need. You don't specify what kind of output you want. If you're just grabbing the contents of a few elements, then maybe you won't want to bother with XSLT. For anything more, XSLT offers an elegant solution. This is primarily because XSLT understands the structure of the document it's working on. Its processing model is tree traversal and pattern matching, which is essentially what you're manually doing in Java.
You could use XSLT to transform your source data into the representation of your choice. Your code will always work on this structure. Then, when the organization you're working with changes the schema, you only have to change your XSLT to transform the new XML into your custom format. None of your other code needs to change. Why should your business logic care about the format of its source data?
You are right that XSLT's processing model based on a rule-based event-driven approach makes your code more resilient to changes in the schema.
Because it's a different processing model to the procedural/navigational approach that you use with DOM, there is a learning and familiarisation curve, which some people find frustrating; if you want to go this way, be patient, because it will be a while before the ideas click into place. Once you are there, it's much easier than DOM programming.
The performance of a good XSLT processor will be good enough for your needs. It's of course possible to write very inefficient code, just as it is in any language, but I've rarely seen a system where XSLT was the bottleneck. Very often the XML parsing takes longer than the XSLT processing (and that's the same cost as with DOM or JAXB or anything else.)
As others have said, a lot depends on what you want to do with the XML data, which you haven't really explained.
I think that what you need is actually an XPath expression. You could configure that expression in some property file or whatever you use to retrieve your setup parameters.
In this way, you'd just change the XPath expression whenever your customer hides away the info you use in yet another place.
Basically, an XSLT is an overkill, you just need an XPath expression. A single XPath expression will allow to home in onto each value you are after.
Update
Since we are now talking about JDK 1.4 I've included below 3 different ways of fetching text in an XML file using XPath. (as simple as possible, no NPE guard fluff I'm afraid ;-)
Starting from the most up to date.
0. First the sample XML config file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<config>
<param id="MaxThread" desc="MaxThread" type="int">250</param>
<param id="rTmo" desc="RespTimeout (ms)" type="int">5000</param>
</config>
1. Using JAXP 1.3 standard part of Java SE 5.0
import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import javax.xml.xpath.*;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
public class TestXPath {
private static final String CFG_FILE = "test.xml" ;
private static final String XPATH_FOR_PRM_MaxThread = "/config/param[#id='MaxThread']/text()";
public static void main(String[] args) {
DocumentBuilderFactory docFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
docFactory.setNamespaceAware(true);
DocumentBuilder builder;
try {
builder = docFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = builder.parse(CFG_FILE);
XPathExpression expr = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath().compile(XPATH_FOR_PRM_MaxThread);
Object result = expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NUMBER);
if ( result instanceof Double ) {
System.out.println( ((Double)result).intValue() );
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
2. Using JAXP 1.2 standard part of Java SE 1.4-2
import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import org.apache.xpath.XPathAPI;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
public class TestXPath {
private static final String CFG_FILE = "test.xml" ;
private static final String XPATH_FOR_PRM_MaxThread = "/config/param[#id='MaxThread']/text()";
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
DocumentBuilderFactory docFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
docFactory.setNamespaceAware(true);
DocumentBuilder builder = docFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = builder.parse(CFG_FILE);
Node param = XPathAPI.selectSingleNode( doc, XPATH_FOR_PRM_MaxThread );
if ( param instanceof Text ) {
System.out.println( Integer.decode(((Text)(param)).getNodeValue() ) );
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
3. Using JAXP 1.1 standard part of Java SE 1.4 + jdom + jaxen
You need to add these 2 jars (available from www.jdom.org - binaries, jaxen is included).
import java.io.File;
import org.jdom.*;
import org.jdom.input.SAXBuilder;
import org.jdom.xpath.XPath;
public class TestXPath {
private static final String CFG_FILE = "test.xml" ;
private static final String XPATH_FOR_PRM_MaxThread = "/config/param[#id='MaxThread']/text()";
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
SAXBuilder sxb = new SAXBuilder();
Document doc = sxb.build(new File(CFG_FILE));
Element root = doc.getRootElement();
XPath xpath = XPath.newInstance(XPATH_FOR_PRM_MaxThread);
Text param = (Text) xpath.selectSingleNode(root);
Integer maxThread = Integer.decode( param.getText() );
System.out.println( maxThread );
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
Since performance is important, I would suggest using a SAX parser for this. JAXB will give you roughly the same performance as DOM parsing PLUS it will be much easier and maintainable. Handling the changes in the schema also should not affect you badly if you are using JAXB, just get the new schema and regenerate the classes. If you have a bridge between the JAXB and your domain logic, then the changes can be absorbed in that layer without worrying about XML. I prefer treating XML as just a message that is used in the messaging layer. All the application code should be agnostic of XML schema.
I am working on an Android application that parses one or more XML feeds based on user preferences. Is it possible to parse (using SAX Parser) more than one XML feed at once by providing the parser with an array of URLs of my XML feeds?
If no, what would be an alternative way of listing the parsed items from different XML feeds in one list? An intuitive approach is to use java.io.SequenceInputStream to merge the two input streams. However, this throws a NullPointerException:
try {
URL urlOne = new URL("http://example.com/feedone.xml");
URL urlTwo = new URL("http://example.com/feedtwo.xml");
InputStream streamOne = urlOne.openStream();
InputStream streamTwo = urlTwo.openStream();
InputStream streamBoth = new SequenceInputStream(streamOne, streamTwo);
InputSource sourceBoth = new InputSource(streamBoth);
//Parsing
stream = xmlHandler.getStream();
}
catch (Exception error) {
error.printStackTrace();
}
List<Item> content = stream.getList();
return content;
The tactic of appending the streams before parsing is not likely to work well, as the appended XML will not be valid XML. As each XML input has its own root element, the appended XML will have multiple roots, which is not permitted in XML. Additionally it's likely to have multiple XML headers like
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
which is also invalid.
While it's possible to preprocess the input to work around these issues, you're likely better off parsing them separately and dealing with getting the results combined later.
It's possible to make a SAX parser add the parsed elements to an existing list of elements. If you post code in your question showing how you're parsing a single file, we might be able to help figure out how to adjust it to your need for multiple inputs.
I'm working on a project under which i have to take a raw file from the server and convert it into XML file.
Is there any tool available in java which can help me to accomplish this task like JAXP can be used to parse the XML document ?
I guess you will need your objects for later use ,so create MyObject that will be some bean that you will load the values form your Raw File and you can write this to someFile.xml
FileOutputStream os = new FileOutputStream("someFile.xml");
XMLEncoder encoder = new XMLEncoder(os);
MyObject p = new MyObject();
p.setFirstName("Mite");
encoder.writeObject(p);
encoder.close();
Or you con go with TransformerFactory if you don't need the objects for latter use.
Yes. This assumes that the text in the raw file is already XML.
You start with the DocumentBuilderFactory to get a DocumentBuilder, and then you can use its parse() method to turn an input stream into a Document, which is an internal XML representation.
If the raw file contains something other than XML, you'll want to scan it somehow (your own code here) and use the stuff you find to build up from an empty Document.
I then usually use a Transformer from a TransformerFactory to convert the Document into XML text in a file, but there may be a simpler way.
JAXP can also be used to create a new, empty document:
Document dom = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance()
.newDocumentBuilder()
.newDocument();
Then you can use that Document to create elements, and append them as needed:
Element root = dom.createElement("root");
dom.appendChild(root);
But, as Jørn noted in a comment to your question, it all depends on what you want to do with this "raw" file: how should it be turned into XML. And only you know that.
I think if you try to load it in an XmlDocument this will be fine
I need your expertise once again. I have a java class that searches a directory for xml files (displays the files it finds in the eclipse console window), applies the specified xslt to these and sends the output to a directory.
What I want to do now is create an xml containing the file names and file format types. The format should be something like;
<file>
<fileName> </fileName>
<fileType> </fileType>
</file>
<file>
<fileName> </fileName>
<fileType> </fileType>
</file>
Where for every file it finds in the directory it creates a new <file>.
Any help is truely appreciated.
Use an XML library. There are plenty around, and the third party ones are almost all easier to use than the built-in DOM API in Java. Last time I used it, JDom was pretty good. (I haven't had to do much XML recently.)
Something like:
Element rootElement = new Element("root"); // You didn't show what this should be
Document document = new Document(rootElement);
for (Whatever file : files)
{
Element fileElement = new Element("file");
fileElement.addContent(new Element("fileName").addContent(file.getName());
fileElement.addContent(new Element("fileType").addContent(file.getType());
}
String xml = XMLOutputter.outputString(document);
Have a look at DOM and ECS. The following example was adapted to you requirements from here:
XMLDocument document = new XMLDocument();
for (File f : files) {
document.addElement( new XML("file")
.addXMLAttribute("fileName", file.getName())
.addXMLAttribute("fileType", file.getType())
)
);
}
You can use the StringBuilder approach suggested by Vinze, but one caveat is that you will need to make sure your filenames contain no special XML characters, and escape them if they do (for example replace < with <, and deal with quotes appropriately).
In this case it probably doesn't arise and you will get away without it, however if you ever port this code to reuse in another case, you may be bitten by this. So you might want to look at an XMLWriter class which will do all the escaping work for you.
Well just use a StringBuilder :
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
for(File f : files) {
builder.append("<file>\n\t<fileName>").append(f.getName).append("</fileName>\n)";
[...]
}
System.out.println(builder.toString());