Java splitting XML into Separate Strings

Question

I want to split the XML file into separate XML's. By reading the and tags. I have split the XML's using StringUtils.substringsBetween. But, I am able to split only two XML's from the file. The third XML is getting appended with the second.

Program:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;

public class SBuff {

    private BufferedReader br;

    public SBuff() {
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

         String data = "<?xml version=\"1.0\"?>\r\n" + 
                "<company>\r\n" + 
                "    <staff>\r\n" + 
                "        <firstname>yong</firstname>\r\n" + 
                "        <lastname>mook kim</lastname>\r\n" + 
                "        <nickname>mkyong</nickname>\r\n" + 
                "        <salary>100000</salary>\r\n" + 
                "    </staff>\r\n" + 
                "    <staff>\r\n" + 
                "        <firstname>low</firstname>\r\n" + 
                "        <lastname>yin fong</lastname>\r\n" + 
                "        <nickname>fong fong</nickname>\r\n" + 
                "        <salary>200000</salary>\r\n" + 
                "    </staff>\r\n" + 
                "    <staff>\r\n" + 
                "        <firstname>low</firstname>\r\n" + 
                "        <lastname>yin fong</lastname>\r\n" + 
                "        <nickname>fong fong</nickname>\r\n" + 
                "        <salary>200000</salary>\r\n" + 
                "    </staff>\r\n" + 
                "</company>\r\n"+
                "</xml>";

        SBuff s = new SBuff();
        s.loadData(data);
    }

    public void loadData(String stream) throws IOException {
        String[] list = StringUtils.substringsBetween(stream,
                "<staff">", "</staff>");

        StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
        for (String s : list) {

            stringBuilder.append("<staff>");
            stringBuilder.append(s);
            stringBuilder.append("</staff>");
            System.out.println("##################################");
            System.out.println(stringBuilder.toString());
            System.out.println("##################################");
        }

    }

    public void display(String data) {
        System.out.println("Buffer Data: " + data);
    }
}

Output:

Expected:

##################################
<staff> 
   <firstname>yong</firstname> 
   <lastname>mook kim</lastname>
   <nickname>mkyong</nickname> 
   <salary>100000</salary>
</staff>
##################################
<staff>
   <firstname>low</firstname> 
   <lastname>yin fong</lastname> 
   <nickname>fong fong</nickname> 
   <salary>200000</salary>
</staff>
##################################
<staff>
   <firstname>low</firstname> 
   <lastname>yin fong</lastname> 
   <nickname>fong fong</nickname> 
   <salary>200000</salary>
</staff>
##################################


Actual:

##################################
<staff> 
   <firstname>yong</firstname> 
   <lastname>mook kim</lastname>
   <nickname>mkyong</nickname> 
   <salary>100000</salary>
</staff>
##################################
<staff>
   <firstname>low</firstname> 
   <lastname>yin fong</lastname> 
   <nickname>fong fong</nickname> 
   <salary>200000</salary>
</staff><staff>
   <firstname>low</firstname> 
   <lastname>yin fong</lastname> 
   <nickname>fong fong</nickname> 
   <salary>200000</salary>
</staff>
##################################

I tried with different methods. None seems to workout. Thanks in Advance.

Never process XML with string manipulation tools, unless you know exactly what you are doing. Parse the XML string with a XML parser and do your changes at XML element level. — vanje, Jun 13 '19 at 12:37
manipulation of serialized data of any kind using regex, String#split etc is always a bad idea — Alex Salauyou, Jun 13 '19 at 12:59

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 13 '19 at 14:06

You can use a XML parser like jsoup.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jsoup</groupId>
    <artifactId>jsoup</artifactId>
    <version>1.12.1</version>
</dependency>

Parse and splitting:

 Document doc = Jsoup.parse(data, "", Parser.xmlParser());
 for(Element staffElement: doc.getElementsByTag("staff")) {
   System.out.println(staffElement);
   System.out.println("##################################");
 }

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 13 '19 at 12:57

For the actual output - your loadData function would be

public void loadData(String stream) throws IOException {
        String[] list = StringUtils.substringsBetween(stream, "<staff>", "</staff>");

        StringBuilder stringBuilder = null;
        System.out.println("##################################");
        for (String s : list) {
            stringBuilder=new StringBuilder();
            stringBuilder.append("<staff>");
            stringBuilder.append(s);
            stringBuilder.append("</staff>");
           // System.out.println("##################################");
            System.out.println(stringBuilder.toString());
            System.out.println("##################################");
        }

    }

Java splitting XML into Separate Strings

2 Answers2