Regex a xml string - java

What would be the correct way to find a string like this in a large xml:
<ser:serviceItemValues>
<ord1:label>Start Type</ord1:label>
<ord1:value>Loop</ord1:value>
<ord1:valueCd/>
<ord1:activityCd>iactn</ord1:activityCd>
</ser:serviceItemValues>
1st in this xml there will be a lot of repeats of the element above with different values (Loop, etc.) and other xml elements in this document. Mainly what I am concerned with is if there is a serviceItemValues that does not have 'Loop' as it's value. I tried this, but it doesn't seem to work:
private static Pattern LOOP_REGEX =
Pattern.compile("[\\p{Print}]*?<ord1:label>Start Type</ord1:label>[\\p{Print}]+[^(Loop)][\\p{Print}]+</ser:serviceItemValues>[\\p{Print}]*?", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE|Pattern.MULTILINE);
Thanks

Regular expressions are not the best option when parsing large amounts of HTML or XML.
There are a number of ways you could handle this without relying on Regular Expressions. Depending on the libraries you have at your disposal you may be able to find the elements you're looking for by using XPaths.
Heres a helpful tutorial that may help you on your way: http://www.totheriver.com/learn/xml/xmltutorial.html

Look up XPath, which is kinda like regex for XML. Sort of.
With XPath you write expressions that extract information from XML documents, so extracting the nodes which don't have Loop as a sub-node is exactly the sort of thing it's cut out for.
I haven't tried this, but as a first stab, I'd guess the XPath expression would look something like:
"//ser:serviceItemValues/ord1:value[text()!='Loop']/parent::*"

Regular expression is not the right tool for this job. You should be using an XML parser. It's pretty simple to setup and use, and will probably take you less time to code. It then will come up with this regular expression.
I recommend using JDOM. It has an easy syntax. An example can be found here:
http://notetodogself.blogspot.com/2008/04/teamsite-dcr-java-parser.html
If the documents that you will be parsing are large, you should use a SAX parser, I recommend Xerces.

When dealing with XML, you should probably not use regular expressions to check the content. Instead, use either a SAX parsing based routine to check relevant contents or a DOM-like model (preferably pull-based if you're dealing with large documents).
Of course, if you're trying to validate the document's contents somehow, you should probably use some schema tool (I'd go with RELAX NG or Schematron, but I guess you could use XML Schema).

As mentioned by the other answers, regular expressions are not the tool for the job. You need a XPath engine. If you want to these things from the command line though, I recommend to install XMLStar. I have very good experience with this tool and solving various XML related tasks. Depending on your OS you might be able to just install the xmlstarlet RPM or deb package. Mac OS X ports includes the package as well I think.

Related

What's the right way to produce a XML content in Java?

I've read several questions and tutorials over the internet such as
Best XML parser for Java [closed]
JAVA XML - How do I get specific elements in an XML Node?
What is the best way to create XML files in Java?
how to modify xml tag specific value in java?
Using StAX - From Oracle Tutorials
Apache Xerces Docs
Introduction to XML and XML With Java
Java DOM Parser - Modify XML Document
But since this is the very first time I have to manipulate XML documents in Java I'm still a little bit confused. The XML content is written with String concatenation and that seems to me wrong. It is the same to concatenate Strings to produce a JSON object instead of using a JSONObject class. That's the way the code is written right now:
"<msg:restenv xmlns:msg=\"http://www.b2wdigital.com/umb/NEXM_processa_nf_xml_req\" xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xsi:schemaLocation=\"http://www.b2wdigital.com/umb/NEXM_processa_nf_xml_req req.xsd\"><autenticacao><usuario>"
+ usuario + "</usuario><senha>" + StringUtils.defaultIfBlank(UmbrellaRestClient.PARAMETROS_INFRA_UMBRELLA.get("SENHA_UMBRELLA"), "WS.INTEGRADOR")
+ "</senha></autenticacao><parametros><parametro><p_vl_gnre>" + valorGNRE + "</p_vl_gnre><p_cnpj_destinatario>" + cnpjFilial + "</p_cnpj_destinatario><p_num_ped_compra>" + idPedido
+ "</p_num_ped_compra><p_xml_sefaz><![CDATA[" + arquivoNfe + "]]></p_xml_sefaz></parametro></parametros></msg:restenv>"
In my research I think that almost everything I've read pointed to SAX as the best solution but I never really found something really useful to read about it, almost everything states that we have to create a handler and override startElement, endElement and characters methods.
I don't have to serialize the XML file in hard disk or database or anything else, I just need to pass its content to a webservice.
So my question really is, which is the right way to do it?
Concatenate Strings the way things are done right now?
Write the XML file using a Java API like Xerces? I have no clue on how that can be done.
Read the XML file with streams and just change node texts? My XML without the files would be like that:
<msg:restenv xmlns:msg="{url}"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="{schemaLocation}">
<autenticacao>
<usuario></usuario>
<senha></senha>
</autenticacao>
<parametros>
<parametro>
<p_vl_gnre></p_vl_gnre>
<p_cnpj_destinatario></p_cnpj_destinatario>
<p_num_ped_compra></p_num_ped_compra>
<p_xml_sefaz><![CDATA[]]></p_xml_sefaz>
</parametro>
</parametros>
</msg:restenv>
I've also read something about using Apache Velocity as a template Engine since I don't actually have to serialize the XML and that's a approach that I really like because I've already worked with this framework and it's a really simple framework.
Again, I'm not looking for the best way, but the right one with tutorials and examples, if possible, on how to get things done.
It all depends on context. There is no single "right way".
The biggest issues with concatenation is the combination of escaping the XML in to a String constant (which is fiddly), but also escaping the values that you can using so that they're correct for an XML document.
For small XMLs, that's fine.
But for larger ones, it can be a pain.
If most of your XML is boilerplate with just a few values inserted, you may find that templates using something like Velocity or any of the other several libraries may be quite effective. It helps keep the template "native" (you don't have to wrap it in "'s and escape it), plus it keeps the XML out of your code, but easily lets you stamp in the parts that you need to do.
I agree that there's not just one way to do it, but I would advise you to take a look at JAXB. You can easily consume and produce XML without any of that pesky String manipulation. Look here for a simple intro: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jaxb/index.html
The Answer by Will Hartung is correct. There is not one right way as it depends on your situation.
For a beginner programmer, I suggest writing the strings manually so you get to understand XML in general and your content in particular. As for the mechanics of String concatenation, you would generally be using StringBuilder rather than String for better performance. Where thread-safety is needed, use StringBuffer.
The major issue is memory.
Abundant MemoryIf you have lots of memory and small XML documents, you can load the entire document into memory. This way you can traverse a document forwards, backwards, and jump around arbitrarily. This approach is know as Document Object Model (DOM). One better-known implementation of this approach is Apache Xerces. There are other good implementations as well.
Scarce MemoryIf you have little memory and large XML documents, then you need to plow through the document from start to finish, biting off small chunks at a time for lower memory usage. This approach is known as SAX. You can find multiple good implementations.
Another issue is validation. Do you want to validate the XML documents against a DTD or Schema? Some tools do this and some do not.
When all you need is to serialize the content of a Java object and read it back, I recommend the Simple XML Serialization library. Much simpler with a quicker learning-curve than the other tools.

What is the fastest way to remove html tags from a document in java?

I have bunch of web document and want to remove the html tags from it. I saw some posts on StackOverflow on how to do in java, all from regex to HtmlCleaner and Jsoup.
I am interested in finding the fastest way to do it. I have millions of documents, so performance is crucial in my case. I can even trade a bit of quality for the performance.
Thanks for any answers in advance.
My opinion is to use as much as possible stream/SAX processing:
1) because it uses less memory
2) it is fast
3) can be more easier parallelized (consequence of low memory consumption)
Those factors are needed (from my pov) by your use cases where you have million of documents.
please see there Wikipedia SAX
So if your Html is strict or XHTML. Use XSLT, and here is a tuto on how to transform XML (XHTML) using SAX XSLT+SAX+Java.
And finally, if you DON'T have an XML valid HTML please, look at this Java: Replace Strings in Streams, Arrays, Files etc. which make use of stream (and PushBackReader).
HTH
1) if html is proper xml then you can create its document object and remove the node.
2) if it is not proper xml then read entire html as string & and use replace function to remove "html" sunbstring.
If HTMl is not proper xml then regex is fastest way to replace in a string.
Seems like the java regexp is the fastest solution. However, it degrades the quality of the text obtained after.

Android XML parser for simple xml node strings

I need to parse a series of simple XML nodes (String format) as they arrive from a persistent socket connection. Is a custom Android SAX parser really the best way? It seams slightly overkill to do it in this way
I had naively hoped I could cast the strings to XML then reference the names / attributes with dot syntax or similar.
I'd use the DOM Parser. It isn't as efficient as SAX, but if it's a simple XML file that's not too large, it's the easiest way to get up and moving.
Great tutorial on how to use it here: http://tutorials.jenkov.com/java-xml/dom.html
You might want to take a look at the XPath library. This is a more simple way of parsing xml. It's similar to building SQL queries and regex's.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-javaxpathapi.html
I'd go for a SAX Parser:
It's much more efficient in terms of memory, especially for larger files: you don't parse an entire document into objects, instead the parser performs a single uni-directional pass over the document and triggers events as it goes through.
It's actually surprisingly easy to implement: for instance take a look at Working with XML on Android by IBM. It's only listings 5 and 6 that are the actual implementation of their SAX parser so it's not a lot of code.
You can try to use Konsume-XML: SAX/STAX/Pull APIs are too low-level and hard to use; DOM requires the XML to fit into memory and is still clunky to use. Konsume-XML is based on Pull and therefore it's extremely efficient, yet the API is higher-level and much easier to use.

What's the best way to retrieve two pieces of data from an XML file?

I've got an XML document that is in either a pre or post FO transformed state that I need to extract some information from. In the pre-case, I need to pull out two tags that represent the pageWidth and pageHeight and in the post case I need to extract the page-height and page-width parameters from a specific tag (I forget which one it is off the top of my head).
What I'm looking for is an efficient/easily maintainable way to grab these two elements. I'd like to only read the document a single time fetching the two things I need.
I initially started writing something that would use BufferedReader + FileReader, but then I'm doing string searching and it gets messy when the tags span multiple lines. I then looked at the DOMParser, which seems like it would be ideal, but I don't want to have to read the entire file into memory if I could help it as the files could potentially be large and the tags I'm looking for will nearly always be close to the top of the file. I then looked into SAXParser, but that seems like a big pile of complicated overkill for what I'm trying to accomplish.
Anybody have any advice? Or simple implementations that would accomplish my goal? Thanks.
Edit: I forgot to mention that due to various limitations I have, whatever I use has to be "builtin" to core Java, in which I can't use and/or download any 3rd party XML tools.
While XPath is very good for querying XML data, I am not aware of good and fast XPath implementation for Java (they all use DOM model at least).
I would recommend you to stick with StAX. It is extremely fast even for huge files, and it's cursor API is rather trivial:
XMLInputFactory f = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
XMLStreamReader r = f.createXMLStreamReader("my.xml");
try {
while (r.hasNext()) {
r.next();
. . .
}
} finally {
r.close()
}
Consult StAX tutorial and XMLStreamReader javadocs for more information.
You can use XPath to search for your tags. Here is a tutorial on forming XPath expressions. And here is an article on using XPath with Java.
An easy to use parser (dom, sax) is dom4j. It would be quite easier to use than the built-in SAXParser.
try "XMLDog"
This uses sax to evaluate xpaths

parsing/scanning/tokenizing "raw XML"

I have an application where I need to parse or tokenize XML and preserve the raw text (e.g. don't parse entities, don't convert whitespace in attributes, keep attribute order, etc.) in a Java program.
I've spent several hours today trying to use StAX, SAX, XSLT, TagSoup, etc. before realizing that none of them do this. I can't afford to spend much more time attacking this problem, and parsing the text manually seems highly nontrivial. Is there any Java library that can help me tokenize the XML?
edit: why am I doing this? -- I have a large XML file that I want to make a small number of localized changes programmatically, that need to be reviewed. It is highly valuable to be able to use a diff tool. If the parser/filter normalizes the XML, then all I see is "red ink" in the diff tool. The application that produces the XML in the first place isn't something that I can easily have changed to produce "canonical XML", if there is such a thing.
I think you might have to generate your own grammar.
Some links:
Parsing XML with ANTLR Tutorial
ANTXR
XPA
http://www.google.com/search?q=antlr+xml
I don't think any XML parser will do what you want. Why ? For instance, the XML spec doesn't enforce attribute ordering. I think you're going to have to parse it yourself, and that is non-trivial.
Why do you have to do this ? I'm guessing you have some client 'XML' that enforces or relies on non-standard construction. In that case I'd push back and get that fixed, rather than jump through numerous fixes to try and accommodate this.
I'm not entirely sure that I understand what it is you are trying to do. Have you tried using CDATA regions for the parts of the document you don't want the parser to touch?
Also relying on attribute order is not a good idea - if I remember the XML standard correctly then order is never to be expected.
It sounds like you are dealing with some malformed XML and that it would be easier to first turn it into proper XML.

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