Transforming XML using Xalan

[Andy Hahn]

Hi, I am trying to write a routine that will read a source .xml and .xsl file and output a String containing the result. I am using the Sun jdk 1.4.2. The code below will successfully transform the xml, but it places the output into a file instead of a java String. Can anyone offer advice to whether I am doing this correctly and/or how to get the ouptut put into a String? I am going to be processing fairly large xml docs and I don't want to ruin performance. Thanks!

  
    public static void main (String[] args) {
        String result = null;
        Transformer transformer = null;
        TransformerFactory tFactory = null;
 
        tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
 
        try {
            transformer = tFactory.newTransformer(new StreamSource("C:/xslt_example/test.xsl"));
        } catch (TransformerConfigurationException e) {
            LOG.error("Error creating transformer from xsl file", e);
        }
 
        try {            
            transformer.transform(new StreamSource("C:/xslt_example/test.xml"), new StreamResult(new FileOutputStream("C:/xslt_example/foo.out")));
        } catch (FileNotFoundException f) {
            LOG.error("Error locating xml file", f);
        } catch (javax.xml.transform.TransformerException t) {
            LOG.error("Error transforming xml file", t);
        }
    }

[DW Bolton]

This should do it for you:

      StreamResult textoutput = new StreamResult(new ByteArrayOutputStream());
 
      TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
      Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer(new StreamSource("C:/xslt_example/test.xsl"));
 
      transformer.transform(new StreamSource("C:/xslt_example/test.xml"), textoutput);
 
      ByteArrayOutputStream finalresult = (ByteArrayOutputStream) textoutput.getOutputStream();
      return finalresult.toString();

Basically, instead of creating your StreamResult with a FileOutputStream, you should be using a ByteArrayOutputStream and then using the toString() method on the ByteArrayOutputStream.
[ August 04, 2005: Message edited by: DW Bolton ]