Convert Document (XML) directly to String in java without using transform or XMLSerializer

Question

Is there another way to convert XML Document object to String just like using transform or XmlSerializer from Apache API? I don't want to use mentioned conversion methods because it renders my output xml modifying tags representation ( like collapsing the empty tags to singleton tags). I want conversion method that output in String from the Document object (kind of treating content of Document object as text).

You could write your own serializer... but that's a lot of work. If your downstream processor cares about the difference between <tag></tag> and <tag/> then it's broken. According to the spec, both forms are acceptable, with identical effect. — Jim Garrison
– Jim Garrison, Commented Dec 20, 2012 at 1:22
Your request doesn't make sense. A DOM Document object doesn't have a "tag representation". Any method of serializing a DOM Document is going to have to devise a representation, there is no existing representation to preserve. — Michael Kay
– Michael Kay, Commented Dec 20, 2012 at 8:32

hd1 · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-20 07:11:51Z

1

You could do worse than SAX, by extending DefaultHandler2 or DefaultHandler:

class Parser extends DefaultHandler { 
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
    public void characters(char[] ch, int start, int length) {
        sb.append(new String(ch, start, length);
    }

    public void startElement(String ns, String qname, String name, Attributes attrs) {
        sb.append(qname+": ");
    }

    public void endElement(String ns, String qname, String name) {
        sb.append("\n");
    }

    public String toString() {
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

edited Dec 20, 2012 at 7:11

answered Dec 20, 2012 at 0:08

hd1

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3 Comments

kdgregory Over a year ago

Have you actually run this code? Can you describe what the output looks like?

hd1 Over a year ago

Many, many times in fact, @kdgregory... if you add a main function that calls the SAXParser according to the documentation at xml.org, it outputs only the text from any XML document, when you print your instance variable to the console.

Vix Over a year ago

@hd1, I need xml tags also in the output string not just text nodes from my xml Document.

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