How to access values of .txt file in XML format?

Question

I have .txt files in the following format:

<DOC>
    <DOCNO> 123456 </DOCNO>
    <DOCTYPE> MISCELLANEOUS </DOCTYPE>
    <TXTTYPE> CAPTION </TXTTYPE>
    <AUTHOR> MICHAEL </AUTHOR>
    <DATE> 1.1.2012 </DATE>
    <TEXT>
    Some Text
    </TEXT>
</DOC>

How can I access tags in these .txt files using Java? I want to know if there is a way to directly access tags rather than reading the .txt file line by line.

@HovercraftFullOfEels It makes perfect sense. He wants to avoid doing the reading himself, with the reading performed behind-the-scenes in some parsing API. Also, sorry to be pedantic, but *"line by line"* is not a given. The file could be read in fixed size blocks, for example. ;) — Rob, Feb 29 '12 at 16:18
yes the format is like XML but the extension is .txt so I am not able to use XML parsers. Am I missing something? — vhelsing, Feb 29 '12 at 16:20
@vhelsing: yes, you can use xml parsers as they don't give a cr@p about file extensions. You may need to dress up the text though if it doesn't have an XML declaration at the top, i.e., ``. — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Feb 29 '12 at 16:21

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 29 '12 at 16:29

As the file is already in XML format, you could just use Java SE builtin JAXB API for this. No need for 3rd party libraries or to dive in another new learning curve with XPath. It also doesn't care about the file extension. All it needs is just an InputStream of the file.

First create a JAXB javabean class which conforms the XML document structure:

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement(name="DOC")
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class Doc {

    @XmlElement(name="DOCNO")
    private Integer docNo;

    @XmlElement(name="DOCTYPE")
    private String docType;

    @XmlElement(name="TXTTYPE")
    private String txtType;

    @XmlElement(name="AUTHOR")
    private String author;

    @XmlElement(name="DATE") // You could use a custom adapter if you want java.util.Date.
    private String date;

    @XmlElement(name="TEXT")
    private String text;

    // Add/generate getters, setters and other javabean boilerplate.
}

Then you can parse it as follows:

JAXBContext jaxb = JAXBContext.newInstance(Doc.class);
InputStream input = new FileInputStream("/path/to/your/file.txt");
Doc doc = (Doc) jaxb.createUnmarshaller().unmarshal(input);
System.out.println(doc.getDocNo());
System.out.println(doc.getDocType());
// ...

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 29 '12 at 16:13

This looks very much like like XML. There are a truckload of utilities that you can use to parse these. So, the work has already been done for you!

Simply search for "java xml parser".

Alternatively, here's a list you can investigate:

jdom
woodstox
xom
dom4j
vtd-xml
xerces-j
crimson

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 29 '12 at 16:13

1

Try a normal XML parser. saxon is a good one.

answered Feb 29 '12 at 16:13

Jayan

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How to access values of .txt file in XML format?

3 Answers3