How to I output org.w3c.dom.Element to string format in java?

Admin 1
Viewed 101648

I have an org.w3c.dom.Element object passed into my method. I need to see the whole xml string including its child nodes (the whole object graph). I am looking for a method that can convert the Element into an xml format string that I can System.out.println on. Just println() on the 'Element' object won't work because toString() won't output the xml format and won't go through its child node. Is there an easy way without writing my own method to do that? Thanks.

xml dom java
7 Answers

Assuming you want to stick with the standard API...

You could use a DOMImplementationLS:

Document document = node.getOwnerDocument();
DOMImplementationLS domImplLS = (DOMImplementationLS) document
    .getImplementation();
LSSerializer serializer = domImplLS.createLSSerializer();
String str = serializer.writeToString(node);

If the <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?> declaration bothers you, you could use a transformer instead:

TransformerFactory transFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = transFactory.newTransformer();
StringWriter buffer = new StringWriter();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
transformer.transform(new DOMSource(node),
      new StreamResult(buffer));
String str = buffer.toString();
user_3040

Not supported in the standard JAXP API, I used the JDom library for this purpose. It has a printer function, formatter options etc. http://www.jdom.org/

user_176130

If you have the schema of the XML or can otherwise create JAXB bindings for it, you could use the JAXB Marshaller to write to System.out:

import javax.xml.bind.*;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.*;
import javax.xml.namespace.QName;

@XmlRootElement
public class BoundClass {

    @XmlAttribute
    private String test;

    @XmlElement
    private int x;

    public BoundClass() {}

    public BoundClass(String test) {
        this.test = test;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        JAXBContext jxbc = JAXBContext.newInstance(BoundClass.class);
        Marshaller marshaller = jxbc.createMarshaller();
        marshaller.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FRAGMENT, true);
        marshaller.marshal(new JAXBElement(new QName("root"),BoundClass.class,new Main("test")),System.out);
    }
}
user_1362640
Related