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In this tutorial, we will see how can we retrieve the child nodes from an XML in Java.
What is XML?
XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. It is a markup language much like HTML and was designed to store and transport data. XML was designed to be both human- and machine-readable. It is a flexible way to create information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere.
Let’s see a simple XML.
<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<department>
<employee id = "10001">
<firstname>Tom</firstname>
<lastname>Mathew</lastname>
<salary>25000</salary>
<age>21</age>
</employee>
<employee id = "20001">
<firstname>Katherine</firstname>
<lastname>Jason</lastname>
<salary>15000</salary>
<age>20</age>
</employee>
<employee id = "30001">
<firstname>David</firstname>
<lastname>Mathew</lastname>
<salary>35000</salary>
<age>25</age>
</employee>
<employee id = "40001">
<firstname>Berry</firstname>
<lastname>Brian</lastname>
<salary>50000</salary>
<age>30</age>
</employee>
</department>
1.A File object inputFile is created, representing the XML file located at “src/test/resources/testData/test.xml”.
2. A DocumentBuilderFactory instance is created. This is a factory API that enables applications to obtain a parser that produces DOM object trees from XML documents.
DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
3. A DocumentBuilder instance is created from the factory. This API provides a way to parse XML documents and create a tree of Node objects.
DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
4. The XML document is parsed using the DocumentBuilder instance, resulting in a Document object that represents the entire XML document.
Document doc = dBuilder.parse(inputFile);
5. The normalize method is called on the Document object to ensure that the document’s DOM tree is fully normalized, which means that it is structurally correct according to the XML specification
doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
6. It retrieves a NodeList of all employee elements in the document and prints out the number of such elements.
NodeList nodeList = doc.getElementsByTagName("employee");
System.out.println("Node Length :" + nodeList.getLength());
7. A for loop is used to iterate over each employee node in the NodeList. For each employee node, its name and the values of its id, firstname, lastname, salary, and age child elements are printed out.
for (int temp = 0; temp < nodeList.getLength(); temp++) {
Node node = nodeList.item(temp);
System.out.println("\nCurrent Element :" + node.getNodeName());
if (node.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
Element eElement = (Element) node;
//returns specific attribute
System.out.println("Employee Id : " + eElement.getAttribute("id"));
//returns a list of subelements of specified name
System.out.println("First Name: " + eElement.getElementsByTagName("firstname").item(0).getTextContent());
System.out.println("Last Name: " + eElement.getElementsByTagName("lastname").item(0).getTextContent());
System.out.println("Salary: " + eElement.getElementsByTagName("salary").item(0).getTextContent());
System.out.println("Age: " + eElement.getElementsByTagName("age").item(0).getTextContent());
}
8. If any exceptions occur during the parsing process (such as ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, or IOException), they are caught, and their stack traces are printed out.
The complete program is mentioned below:
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
public class XMLParser {
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
//Create a DocumentBuilder
File inputFile = new File("src/test/resources/testData/test.xml");
System.out.println("Request :" + inputFile);
DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = dBuilder.parse(inputFile);
doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
//Extract the root element
System.out.println("Root element :" + doc.getDocumentElement().getNodeName());
NodeList nodeList = doc.getElementsByTagName("employee");
System.out.println("Node Length :" + nodeList.getLength());
for (int temp = 0; temp < nodeList.getLength(); temp++) {
Node node = nodeList.item(temp);
System.out.println("\nCurrent Element :" + node.getNodeName());
if (node.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
Element eElement = (Element) node;
//returns specific attribute
System.out.println("Employee Id : " + eElement.getAttribute("id"));
//returns a list of subelements of specified name
System.out.println("First Name: " + eElement.getElementsByTagName("firstname").item(0).getTextContent());
System.out.println("Last Name: " + eElement.getElementsByTagName("lastname").item(0).getTextContent());
System.out.println("Salary: " + eElement.getElementsByTagName("salary").item(0).getTextContent());
System.out.println("Age: " + eElement.getElementsByTagName("age").item(0).getTextContent());
}
}
} catch (ParserConfigurationException | SAXException | IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
The output of the above program is
Complex XML
<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<cars>
<sportscar company = "Porsce">
<carname type = "formula one">Porsche 718 Boxster</carname>
<carname type = "sports car">Porsche 718 Cayman</carname>
<carname type = "sports car">2024 Porsche Panamera</carname>
</sportscar>
<supercars company = "Lamborgini">
<carname>Lamborghini Aventador</carname>
<carname>Lamborghini Reventon</carname>
<carname>Lamborghini Gallardo</carname>
</supercars>
<supercars company = "Audi">
<carname>Audi R8</carname>
<carname>Audi Q8</carname>
<carname>Audi Q6 e-tron</carname>
</supercars>
</cars>
The complete program is shown below:
package com.example.XML;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
public class ComplexXMLParser {
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
//Create a DocumentBuilder
File inputFile = new File("src/test/resources/testData/test4.xml");
System.out.println("Request :" + inputFile);
DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = dBuilder.parse(inputFile);
doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
//Extract the root element
System.out.println("Root element :" + doc.getDocumentElement().getNodeName());
NodeList sportscarNodeList = doc.getElementsByTagName("sportscar");
// System.out.println("Node Length :" + nodeList.getLength());
for (int temp = 0; temp < sportscarNodeList.getLength(); temp++) {
Node node = sportscarNodeList.item(temp);
System.out.println("\nCurrent Element :" + node.getNodeName());
if (node.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
Element eElement = (Element) node;
//returns specific attribute
System.out.println("sportscar : " + eElement.getAttribute("company"));
NodeList sportcarNameList = eElement.getElementsByTagName("carname");
for (int count = 0; count < sportcarNameList.getLength(); count++) {
Node node1 = sportcarNameList.item(count);
if (node1.getNodeType() == node1.ELEMENT_NODE) {
Element car = (Element) node1;
System.out.print("\ncar type : " + car.getAttribute("type"));
System.out.print("\ncar name : " + car.getTextContent());
}
}
}
}
System.out.println("\n====================================================");
NodeList supercarsNodeList = doc.getElementsByTagName("supercars");
// System.out.println("Node Length :" + nodeList.getLength());
for (int temp = 0; temp < supercarsNodeList.getLength(); temp++) {
Node node1 = supercarsNodeList.item(temp);
System.out.println("\nCurrent Element :" + node1.getNodeName());
if (node1.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
Element eElement = (Element) node1;
//returns specific attribute
System.out.println("supercars : " + eElement.getAttribute("company"));
NodeList supercarsNameList = eElement.getElementsByTagName("carname");
for (int count = 0; count < supercarsNameList.getLength(); count++) {
Node node2 = supercarsNameList.item(count);
if (node1.getNodeType() == node2.ELEMENT_NODE) {
Element car = (Element) node2;
System.out.print("car name : " + car.getTextContent()+"\n");
}
}
}
}
} catch (ParserConfigurationException | SAXException | IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
The output of the above program is
We are done! Congratulations on making it through this tutorial and hope you found it useful! Happy Learning!!
QA Automation Expert 