Java : Parsing xml file using SAX/XPATH

Question

I have a xml file, mentioned below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Workbook>
    <ExcelWorkbook
    xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"/>
        <Worksheet ss:Name="Table 1">
            <Table>
                <Row ss:Index="7" ss:AutoFitHeight="0" ss:Height="12">
                <Cell ss:Index="1" ss:StyleID="s05">
                    <ss:Data ss:Type="String"
                        xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
                        <Font html:Size="9" html:Face="Times New Roman" x:Family="Roman" html:Color="#000000">
                        ABCD
                        </Font>
                    </ss:Data>
                </Cell>
            </Row>

How do I extract the data, "ABCD" here, using SAX or XPATH in Java?

EDIT 1:

This is the XML-

<Table>
<Row ss:Index="74" ss:AutoFitHeight="0" ss:Height="14">
    <Cell ss:Index="1" ss:MergeAcross="3" ss:StyleID="s29">
        <ss:Data ss:Type="Number" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
        0.00
        </ss:Data>
    </Cell>
    <Cell ss:Index="15" ss:MergeAcross="5" ss:StyleID="s29">
        <ss:Data ss:Type="Number" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
        4.57
        </ss:Data>
    </Cell>
</Row>

does it have to be SAX? XPATH is much better suited for searching in XML doc — Sharon Ben Asher
– Sharon Ben Asher, Commented Apr 10, 2016 at 12:19
@sharonbn XPATH would be alright, but I am not at all familiar with it. Can you please help me out? — Dax Amin
– Dax Amin, Commented Apr 10, 2016 at 12:21
@sharonbn I modified your code. String cellStringContent = "/*[@ss:Type='Number']/*[text()]/text()";. But it gives error here- if (n.getNodeType() == Node.TEXT_NODE). Instead of TEXT_NODE i tried using other nodeType named constants, but it didnt work. Please help. — Dax Amin
– Dax Amin, Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 14:50
what is the error? what is the value of getNodeType in this case? what does the xml look like in this case? — Sharon Ben Asher
– Sharon Ben Asher, Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 15:53
try String cellStringContent = "/*[@ss:Type='Number']/text()"; the reason is that there is no <Font> element — Sharon Ben Asher
– Sharon Ben Asher, Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 16:00

Sharon Ben Asher · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-10 14:45:00Z

The solution assumes that the question is how to get the text for any cell based on row and column numbers.

It took me a while to get the solution because of the use of namespaces in the input document. apparently, xpath cannot parse qualified elements and attributes without a namespace processor and one hsa to implement an interface for this purpose (there is no default?) so I found a map based implementation here and used it.

So, assuming you have the class from the link in your source tree, the following code works. I broke the search pattern to several variables for the sake of clarity

public static String getCellValue(String filename, int rowIdx, int colIdx) {
    // search for Table element anywhere in the source
    String tableElementPattern = "//*[name()='Table']";
    // search for Row element with given number
    String rowPattern = String.format("/*[name()='Row' and @ss:Index='%d']", rowIdx) ;
    // search for Cell element with given column number
    String cellPattern = String.format("/*[name()='Cell' and @ss:Index='%d']", colIdx) ;  
    // search for element that has ss:Type="String" attribute, search for element with text under it and get text name
    String cellStringContent = "/*[@ss:Type='String']/*[text()]/text()";  
    String completePattern = tableElementPattern + rowPattern + cellPattern + cellStringContent;

    try (FileReader reader = new FileReader(filename)) {
        XPath xPath = getXpathProcessor();
        Node n = (Node)xPath.compile(completePattern)
        .evaluate(new InputSource(reader), XPathConstants.NODE);
        if (n.getNodeType() == Node.TEXT_NODE) {
            return n.getNodeValue().trim();
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return null;
}

private static XPath getXpathProcessor() {
    // this is where the custom implementation of NamespaceContext is used
    NamespaceContext context = new NamespaceContextMap(
        "html", "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40", 
        "xsl", "http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform",
        "o", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office",
        "x", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel",
        "ss", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet");
    XPath xpath =  XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
    xpath.setNamespaceContext(context);
    return xpath;
}

calling:

System.out.println(getCellValue("C://Temp/xx.xml", 7, 1));

produces the desired output

vtd-xml-author · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-22 00:34:08Z

0

Below is the code to do query your XML with vtd-xml...

import com.ximpleware.*;

public class queryXML{

 public static void main(String[] s) throws VTDException{

        VTDGen vg = new VTDGen();
        vg.selectLcDepth(5);
        if (!vg.parseFile("d:\\xml\\test11.xml", false))
            return;
        VTDNav vn = vg.getNav();
        AutoPilot ap = new AutoPilot(vn);
        ap.declareNameSpace("ss","urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet");
              ap.selectXPath("/Workbook/ExcelWorkbook/Worksheet/Table/Cell/ss:data/font/text()");
int i=0;
while((i=ap.evalXPath())!=-1){
 System.out.println(" data content ==>"+vn.toString(i);
}


}


}

answered Apr 22, 2016 at 0:34

vtd-xml-author

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