Xml not parsing String as input with sax

Question

I have a string input from which I need to extract simple information, here is the sample xml (from mkyong):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<company>
    <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>
</company>

How I parse it within my code (I have a field String name in my class) :

public String getNameFromXml(String xml) {
        try {

            SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
            SAXParser saxParser = factory.newSAXParser();
            DefaultHandler handler = new DefaultHandler() {

                boolean firstName = false;

                public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes attributes) throws SAXException {

                    if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("firstname")) {
                        firstName = true;
                    }
                }

                public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length) throws SAXException {

                    if (firstName) {
                        name = new String(ch, start, length);
                        System.out.println("First name is : " + name);
                        firstName = false;
                    }

                }

            };

            saxParser.parse(xml.toString(), handler);

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return name;
    }

I'm getting a java.io.FileNotFoundException and I see that it's trying to find a file myprojectpath + the entireStringXML

What am I doing wrong?

Addon :

Here is my main method :

public static void main(String[] args) {
        Text tst = new Text("<?xml version=\"1.0\"?><company>   <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></company>");
        NameFilter cc = new NameFilter();
        String result = cc.getNameFromXml(tst);
        System.out.println(result);
    }

Lannielanning

any reason in particular why you cant write the xml string to an xml file and parse that way? – Flossi

@Kamron K. yes, because I'm writing hive user defined function (cwiki.apache.org/Hive/languagemanual-udf.html). I scan bunch of records in non-relational database and each record has a small snipped of xml stored in a record. – Lannielanning

Answer 1

You should replace the line saxParser.parse(xml.toString(), handler); with the following one:

saxParser.parse(new InputSource(new StringReader(xml)), handler);

Phyla

Answer 2

I'm going to highlight another issue, which you're likely to hit once you read your file correctly.

The method

public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length) 

won't always give you the complete text element. It's at liberty to give you the text element (content) 'n' characters at a time. From the doc:

SAX parsers may return all contiguous character data in a single chunk, or they may split it into several chunks

So you should build up your text element string from each call to this method (e.g. using a StringBuilder) and only interpret/store that text once the corresponding endElement() method is called.

This may not impact you now. But it'll arise at some time in the future - likely when you least expect it. I've encountered it when moving from small to large XML documents, where buffering has been able to hold the whole small document, but not the larger one.

An example (in pseudo-code):

   public void startElement() {
      builder.clear();
   }
   public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length) {
      builder.append(new String(ch, start, length));
   }
   public void endElement() {
      // no do something with the collated text
      builder.toString();
   }

Barrington

+1 for the though, can you give an example of how to do it in the endElement() please. thank you. I feel this is important what you are talking about – Lannielanning

thanks for the response, is this correct? justpaste.it/12w3 did you mean this (I added the endelement) – Lannielanning

@Gandalf - I can't get access to that site for the moment. Perhaps someone else can check ? – Barrington

This isn't fool-proof since it's valid XML to encounter additional XML elements--with their own text characters--while parsing. In other words, you could see startElement(), characters(), startElement(), characters(), endElement(), more characters(), before reaching endElement(). Or worse than this. So, keep a stack of builder buffers. If you know your data won't exhibit that, however, you don't have to worry about it. – Accrete

Answer 3

Mybe this help. it's uses javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder, which is easier than SAX

public Document getDomElement(String xml){
        Document doc = null;
        DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        try {

            DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();

            InputSource is = new InputSource();
                is.setCharacterStream(new StringReader(xml));
                doc = db.parse(is); 

            } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
                Log.e("Error: ", e.getMessage());
                return null;
            } catch (SAXException e) {
                Log.e("Error: ", e.getMessage());
                return null;
            } catch (IOException e) {
                Log.e("Error: ", e.getMessage());
                return null;
            }
                // return DOM
            return doc;
    }

you can loop through the document by using NodeList and check each Node by it's name

Switzerland

Answer 4

Seems you took this example from here . You need to pass a file with absolute path an not a string to method SAXParser.parse(); Look the example closely. The method parse() defined as follows

public void parse(File f,
                  DefaultHandler dh)
           throws SAXException,
                  IOException

If you want to parse a string anyways. There is another method which takes Inputstream.

public void parse(InputStream is,
                  DefaultHandler dh)
           throws SAXException,
                  IOException

Then you need to convert your string to an InputStream. Here is how to do it.

Hyperthyroidism

Answer 5

You call parse with a String as the first parameter. According to the docu that string is interpreted as the URI to your file.

If you want to parse your String directly, you have to transform it to an InputStream in the first place for usage with the parse(InputSource is, DefaultHandler dh) method (docu):

// transform from string to inputstream
ByteArrayInputStream in = new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.toString().getBytes());
InputSource is = new InputSource();
is.setByteStream(in);

// start parsing
saxParser.parse(xml.toString(), handler);

Daina