XML, check if ITEM exist

[Mathew Mintalm]

Hello, im getting data from XML file, with this way:

DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
		factory.setValidating(false);
		factory.setIgnoringComments(true);
		
		File file = new File(FILE_PATH);
		
		if (!file.exists())
		{
			_log.warning("xml file does not exist, check directory!");
		}
		try
		{
			InputSource in = new InputSource(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(file), "UTF-8"));
			in.setEncoding("UTF-8");
			Document doc = factory.newDocumentBuilder().parse(in);
			
			for (Node n = doc.getFirstChild(); n != null; n = n.getNextSibling())
			{
				if (n.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("list"))
				{
					for (Node d = n.getFirstChild(); d != null; d = d.getNextSibling())
					{
						if (d.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("data"))
						{	
							String name = String.valueOf(d.getAttributes().getNamedItem("name").getNodeValue());
						}
					}
				}
			}
		}
		catch (Exception e)
		{
			e.printStackTrace();
		}

(This is just short example)

And my xml file looks like this

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> <list> <data name="test" item1="test2" item3="test3"/> <data name="something" item1="hi"/> </list>

What do I want to achieve? As you can see in this example (OF XML File) sometimes I can use item1 or item2 or item3 (or all of them at the same time, doesnt matter) XML ITEMS.

And I can not find way to make code which will check name of each item and lets say check if name of this item is inside List<String> and if is, and its name equals for example item1 do some action and so on with other possible used items.

Thanks in advance for help!

[Paul Clapham]

Well, I have to say that's a bad design for an XML document -- hiding data in attribute names shouldn't be done. However if you're stuck with that design, i.e. if somebody else thought it up and won't change it, then you can cast an element node to Element. This interface has a method for getting you all of the attributes, and you can scan through them.

[Mathew Mintalm]

Thanks for answer.

I can get attribues like this:

d.getAttributes()

but I can not iterate.

//edit, I found this way to iterate over this map:

	private static void iterate(NamedNodeMap attributesList) {
	    for (int j = 0; j < attributesList.getLength(); j++) {
	        System.out.println("Attribute: "
	                + attributesList.item(j).getNodeName() + " = "
	                + attributesList.item(j).getNodeValue());
	    }
	}

It works, but do you think it will be ok like this?

[Paul Clapham]

Mathew Mintalm wrote:It works, but do you think it will be ok like this?

I don't know. What do you mean by "ok"? It already produces the information you need, so why isn't that already "ok"?

[William Brogden]

Don't rely on the position of attributes (ie 0,1,or 2 etc) in the "attributesList" - rely on the attribute name. Parsers are not required to respect the order of attributes in an Element.

Bill