Writing a DOM's contents to a String

[Jo Mo]

Does anyone know if there is a quick and easy way (using JAXP or any other Java XML parser) to convert the contents of a DOM to a String?
I am used to working with Microsoft's parser so I apologize for the comparison (again), but MSXML's DOMDocument object has a method, .xml() which will convert the contents of the DOM into a String.
Example:
l_sXML = l_oXML.xml
Debug.Print l_sXML
The output might be something like "<junk><stuff>This is junk</stuff></junk>". This can then be passed around in code as a String.
Anything like this in a (Java) DOM?
Thanks.

[Ajith Kallambella]

You could use the XMLSerializer that comes bundled with Xerces.
Here's a small code example -

try { 
   OutputFormat format = new OutputFormat(w3cDocument); 
   format.setLineSeparator(LineSeparator.Windows); 
   format.setIndent(0); // no indent 
   format.setLineWidth(0); // no CR 
   XMLSerializer serializer = new XMLSerializer(new fileOutputStream(this.getFullFilename()), format); 
   serializer.serialize(w3cDocument); 
} 
catch (FileNotFoundException exc) { 
   System.err.println("ERROR: cannot find file " + getFullFilename () + ". No changes saved."); 
   return false; 
} 
catch (IOException exc) { 
   System.err.println("ERROR: cannot write file " + 
   getFullFilename() + ". No changes saved."); 
   return false; 
} 
return true ;

Note that since XMLSerializer can write to any OutputStream, you can either write to a file or a String.
Hope that helps!

------------------
Ajith Kallambella M.
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java�2 Platform.
IBM Certified Developer - XML and Related Technologies, V1.
[This message has been edited by Ajith Kallambella (edited June 07, 2001).]