Getting xml from url not working

Question

public class GetXMLTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, String> {

// XML node names
static final String NODE_EVEN = "event";
static final String NODE_NAME = "name";
static final String NODE_DATE = "date";
static final String NODE_LOC = "location";

private TextView txtView; 



public GetXMLTask(TextView txtView) {
   this.txtView = txtView; 

}

@Override
protected String doInBackground(String... urls) {
    String xml = null;
    for (String url : urls) {
        xml = getXmlFromUrl(url);

    }
    return xml;
}

@Override
protected void onPostExecute(String xml) {

    XMLDOMParser parser = new XMLDOMParser();
    InputStream stream = new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.getBytes());
    Document doc = parser.getDocument(stream);

    NodeList nodeList = doc.getElementsByTagName(NODE_EVEN);

    ArrayList<Event>events = new ArrayList<Event>();

    Event event = new Event();
    for (int i = 0; i < nodeList.getLength(); i++) {
       // event = new Event();
        Element e = (Element) nodeList.item(i);

        //will use for something later on
        event.setName(parser.getValue(e, NODE_NAME));
        //event.setName(parser.getValue(e, NODE_DATE));
        event.setName(parser.getValue(e, NODE_LOC));            
        events.add(event);
    }
    txtView.setText(doc.toString()); // to test xml!

}

/* uses HttpURLConnection to make Http request from Android to download
 the XML file */
private String getXmlFromUrl(String urlString) {
    StringBuffer output = new StringBuffer("");

    InputStream stream = null;
    URL url;
    try {
        url = new URL(urlString);
        URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();

        HttpURLConnection httpConnection = (HttpURLConnection) connection;
        httpConnection.setRequestMethod("GET");
        httpConnection.connect();

        if (httpConnection.getResponseCode() == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
            stream = httpConnection.getInputStream();
            BufferedReader buffer = new BufferedReader(
                    new InputStreamReader(stream));
            String s = "";
            while ((s = buffer.readLine()) != null)
                output.append(s);
        }
    } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
        Log.e("Error", "Unable to parse URL", e);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        Log.e("Error", "IO Exception", e);
    }

    return output.toString();


}


}

It doesn't take that long to complete so considering how slow the emulator is something must be going wrong with the getxmlfromurl right? i get output in my textview

org.apache.harmony.xml.dom.DocumentImpl@b3d5c4b0

My url is fine right before calling getXMLFromUrl iv tested that.

Jon Skeet · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-08 20:41:26Z

2

Nothing is going wrong. You are successfully parsing an XML document, which you've got a reference to in the doc variable.

All that's wrong is your expectation that Document.toString() will give you back something meaningful. It looks like it's not being overridden, which is why you're getting that string. If you want to get XML text out again, you need to use a transformer, IIRC.

Your getXmlFromUrl method is broken, however - it's removing line breaks, which means if you've got XML of:

<foo>line 1
line 2</foo>

it will end up with a single piece of content "line 1line2 " which is incorrect. Additionally, you shouldn't call String.getBytes() without specifying the encoding. (Ditto the InputStreamReader without an encoding.) Basically, it's not clear why you don't just parse the XML straight from the HttpURLConnection's input strema... that would be much less code, and would avoid various bugs you've currently got in your code.

answered Apr 8, 2014 at 20:41

Jon Skeet

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1 Comment

nicwhitts Over a year ago

I'v just changed the xmlFromUrl and now that works. And your right abut the toString() too, iv just logged event.getName and it comes out as expected. I'm a little confused why toString() is not working though?

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