How to read a cdata using sax parser

[riaz rahman]

I am new to XML & i want to read a query from xml.
which will be in cdata tag.
please help me by providing source code for reading cdata usin sax parser.
thanx in advance

[Bajji Pat]

You can use the following snippet- the characters() method would catch any CDATA sections within XML:

package com.saxparser;
 
 
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
 
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
 
import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.ParserAdapter;
 
public class ServerSideSAXParser extends DefaultHandler {
private static String START_TAG= "start";


public synchronized void  startElement(String namespace, 
String localName, 
String qName,
Attributes atts) {
if (localName.equals(START_TAG)) 
{
System.out.println(START_TAG+" encountered");

}
}
public synchronized void characters(char[] cbuf, int start, int len) 
   {
  System.out.print("Characters:");
  System.out.println(new String(cbuf,start,len));
   }
public synchronized void processingInstruction(String target, String data) 
  throws SAXException 
   {
  System.out.println("ProcessingInstruction:"+target+" "+data);
   }

public synchronized void parseString(String msgXML) throws Exception 
{

   System.out.println("Processing Message " + 
 msgXML);
     SAXParserFactory spf = 
 SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
   SAXParser sp = spf.newSAXParser();
   System.out.println("CLASS :"+sp.getClass());
   System.out.println(System.getProperty("javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory"));
   ParserAdapter pa = 
 new ParserAdapter(sp.getParser());
   pa.setContentHandler(this);
byte bytearray[] = msgXML.getBytes();
ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(bytearray);
   pa.parse(new InputSource(bais));
   
   
 
}
public static void main(String[] args)throws Exception {
ServerSideSAXParser ref = new ServerSideSAXParser();
ref.parseString("<start><![CDATA['This is the cdata']]></start>");
}
}

[ December 07, 2005: Message edited by: Bajji Pat ]

[Anand Gondhiya]

Thanks for providing the code.

[Jeremie Juste]

Hello,

I have still a lot to learn in programming and I'm sorry for this stupid question.
But i was wondering how to use this code ?

Can you modify it to read txt files or html?

Will anyone be kind enough to reply to this question?

[Ulf Dittmer]

XML *is* text. But text is not normally XML, and neither is HTML. So, no, you can't use a SAX parser for reading text files in general or HTML.

But the question is: why would you want to? What are you trying to accomplish?

[Jeremie Juste]

Many thanks for the help

In fact i'm doing some web scraping and want to get some data found in between the CData.

I have found a nice code doing part of this job.
http://www.java-tips.org/java-se-tips/org.xml.sax/accessing-character-data-cdata-of-xml-element.html

[Ulf Dittmer]

HTML is not generally XML. I suspect that this code will not work for 99% of all web pages in existence (doesn't mean it won't work for any particular page you're interested in, of course, especially if that page happens to be XHTML).