We Keep Coding

Java XML api removes whitespace before self closing tag

I've XML file which contains only one element
<Message>
<Location URI ="XXX:XXX:XXX" />
</Message>
I want to read and print same XML using Java, but after print it loses white space before />
<Message>
<Location URI ="XXX:XXX:XXX"/>
</Message>
I have tried different configuration of DocumentBuilderFactory and Transformer but the result is same.
Any Idea?
DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document requestDocument = builder.parse(this.getClass().getResourceAsStream("/message-template.xml"));
TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tf.newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
DOMSource domSource = new DOMSource(requestDocument);
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
StreamResult result = new StreamResult(writer);
transformer.transform(domSource, result);
System.out.println(writer.toString());

Here :
DOMSource domSource = new DOMSource(requestDocument);
...
transformer.transform(domSource, result);
You transform a DOMSource into a StreamResult . A DOMSource is not not a textual representation of the XML file but a Document Object Model (DOM) tree.
So whitespaces that are not considered as relevant to represent the content of the tree are not kept in the DOMSource :
URI ="XXX:XXX:XXX" />
|-------> not preserved
Most of APIs to represent and manipulate XML work in this way.
If you need to keep not significant whitespace in your result, you should probably do yourself the parsing of the XML file.

Java Transformer outputs < and > instead of <>

I am editing an XML file in Java with a Transformer by adding more nodes. The old XML code is unchanged but the new XML nodes have < and > instead of <> and are on the same line. How do I get <> instead of < and > and how do I get line breaks after the new nodes. I already read several similar threads but wasn't able to get the right formatting. Here is the relevant portion of the code:
// Read the XML file
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf= DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc=db.parse(xmlFile.getAbsoluteFile());
Element root = doc.getDocumentElement();
// create a new node
Element newNode = doc.createElement("Item");
// add it to the root node
root.appendChild(newNode);
// create a new attribute
Attr attribute = doc.createAttribute("Name");
// assign the attribute a value
attribute.setValue("Test...");
// add the attribute to the new node
newNode.setAttributeNode(attribute);
// transform the XML
Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.METHOD, "xml");
StreamResult result = new StreamResult(new FileWriter(xmlFile.getAbsoluteFile()));
DOMSource source = new DOMSource(doc);
transformer.transform(source, result);
Thanks

To replace the &gt and other tags you can use org.apache.commons.lang3:
StringEscapeUtils.unescapeXml(resp.toString());
After that you can use the following property of transformer for having line breaks in your xml:
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");

based on a question posted here:
public void writeToOutputStream(Document fDoc, OutputStream out) throws Exception {
fDoc.setXmlStandalone(true);
DOMSource docSource = new DOMSource(fDoc);
Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.METHOD, "xml");
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "UTF-8");
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "no");
transformer.transform(docSource, new StreamResult(out));
}
produces:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
The differences I see:
fDoc.setXmlStandalone(true);
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "UTF-8");

Try passing InputStream instead of Writer to StreamResult.
StreamResult result = new StreamResult(new FileInputStream(xmlFile.getAbsoluteFile()));
The Transformer documentation also suggests that.

java xml document.getTextContent() stays empty

I'm trying to build an xml document in a JUnit test.
doc=docBuilder.newDocument();
Element root = doc.createElement("Settings");
doc.appendChild(root);
Element label0 = doc.createElement("label_0");
root.appendChild(label0);
String s=doc.getTextContent();
System.out.println(s);
Yet the document stays empty (i.e. the println yields null.) I don'thave a clue why that is. The actual problem is that a subsequent XPath expression throws the error: Unable to evaluate expression using this context.

The return value of getTextContent on Document is defined to null- See Node.
To retreive the text contents call getTextNode on the root element

I imagine you want to serialize the document to pass it to the test case.
To do this you have to pass your document to an empty XSL transformer, like this:
Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
//initialize StreamResult with File object to save to file
StreamResult result = new StreamResult(new StringWriter());
DOMSource source = new DOMSource(doc);
transformer.transform(source, result);
String xmlString = result.getWriter().toString();
System.out.println(xmlString);
See also: How to pretty print XML from Java?

How to convert xml Element and its child nodes into String in Java?

Hi I want to convert XML node and its child into a string with its node names.
For example I get a node from XML document which is look like this:
<Name>
<Work>*86</Work>
<Home>*86</Home>
<Mobile>*80</Mobile>
<Work>0</Work>
</Name>
I want to convert whole node into string. With nodenames, not only text. Any help in this regards is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

you can use JDom XMLOutputter subject to the condition that your Element is an org.jdom.Element:
XMLOutputter outp = new XMLOutputter();
String s = outp.outputString(your_jdom_element);

You can use a transformer for that:
Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
StreamResult result = new StreamResult(new StringWriter());
DOMSource source = new DOMSource(node);
transformer.transform(source, result);
String xmlString = result.getWriter().toString();
System.out.println(xmlString);

XML Document to String

What's the simplest way to get the String representation of a XML Document (org.w3c.dom.Document)? That is all nodes will be on a single line.
As an example, from
<root>
<a>trge</a>
<b>156</b>
</root>
(this is only a tree representation, in my code it's a org.w3c.dom.Document object, so I can't treat it as a String)
to
"<root> <a>trge</a> <b>156</b> </root>"
Thanks!

Assuming doc is your instance of org.w3c.dom.Document:
TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tf.newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
transformer.transform(new DOMSource(doc), new StreamResult(writer));
String output = writer.getBuffer().toString().replaceAll("\n|\r", "");

Use the Apache XMLSerializer
here's an example:
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=31349&seqNum=3&rl=1
you can check this as well
http://www.netomatix.com/XmlFileToString.aspx

First you need to get rid of all newline characters in all your text nodes. Then you can use an identity transform to output your DOM tree. Look at the javadoc for TransformerFactory#newTransformer().