Java contextual sax / stax parsing

Question

I would like to extract all text elements which appear directly as a child node to the root node. I've had a glance at java standard sax fascilities using DefaultHandler; but it doesn't seem like it's path aware.

The problem is getting first-level only nodes, not extracting only text-nodes.

Is there any non-DOM oriented approach to do this? (Note, the node names are not known in advance)

[EDIT]

Sample input

<root>
   <a>text1</a>
   <b>text2</b>
   <c>text3</c>
   <nested>
       <d>not_text4</d>
       ...
   <nested>
   ...
</root>

Sample output

Map<String, String> map := {
    {a, text1}
    {b, text2}
    {c, text3}
}

Currently solved as a DOM oriented workaround. Although there exist libraries which offers a subset of xpath expressions for SAX / STAX.

If you add some example input xml and expected result we can better help you. — Don Roby, Mar 23 '11 at 11:20

Don Roby · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-23T11:38:17.937

2

SAX and StAX indeed aren't path aware by nature as they're event oriented. While it's certainly possible to implement a handler that tracks parsing level, you're probably better off with XPath.

A somewhat more complex tactic might be to write an XSLT transform that retains only the elements you're after and then process the result using SAX or Stax.

edited Mar 23 '11 at 11:38

answered Mar 23 '11 at 11:24

Don Roby

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I'm afraid you are right. Good news is there might be a way for [streamig xpath](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/996103/streaming-xpath-evaluation) – Johan Sjöberg Mar 23 '11 at 11:32
@Johan - yes, that might work. Also see my update for another possibility that wouldn't require loading the whole doc. – Don Roby Mar 23 '11 at 11:39

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 23 '11 at 09:49

1

This will be a little overhead, but you get a powerful tool to work with xml. Try JAXB.

answered Mar 23 '11 at 09:49

Vladimir Ivanov

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Thanks, although I need to efficiently extract a `List` of all *first-level* elements in an xml document rather than converting them to java objects. – Johan Sjöberg Mar 23 '11 at 10:24

Java contextual sax / stax parsing

Sample input

Sample output

2 Answers2