How to read child nodes of a parent node from XML using java

Question

 <invoice>
    <obs>
    <ob>
     <code>ABC</code>
    </ob>
    <ob>
     <code>123</code>
    </ob>
    </obs>
  </invoice>
<invoice>
    <obs>
    <ob>
     <code>DEF</code>
    </ob>
    </obs>
  </invoice>
</invoices>

Ok , my question is , I have that xml , which will come to me from external system ,it can have large number of 'invoice' nodes and one 'invoice' node can have large number of 'code' nodes. I want to read the 'code' nodes of all 'invoice' nodes and save them in an array like this : invoice[1].code[1]=ABC invoice[1].code[2]=123 invoice[2].code[1]=DEF . How to do this using XPathExpression in JAVA. Below is my xpath expression which is not working.

expr = xpath.compile("//invoices/invoice/obs/ob/code/text()");

Please give a general answer in case number of 'invoice' nodes and 'code' nodes are high

Dimos · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-16 16:35:42Z

1

Your XML is not well structured. There is an <invoices> missing in the beginning. The proper structure is the following :

    <invoices>
        <invoice>
            <obs>
                <ob>
                    <code>ABC</code>
                </ob>
                <ob>
                    <code>123</code>
                </ob>
           </obs>
        </invoice>
        <invoice>
            <obs>
                <ob>
                    <code>DEF</code>
                </ob>
            </obs>
        </invoice>
    </invoices>

The xpath expression you defined is right. I tested with python (and lxml library) for speed with the following commands :

from lxml import etree
tree = etree.parse('yourfile.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
root.xpath('//invoices/invoice/obs/ob/code/text()')

and I got the array you want :

['ABC', '123', 'DEF']

answered Mar 16, 2015 at 16:35

Dimos

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2 Comments

Anudocs Over a year ago

Thanks for correcting the xml. But my question is , I want to write an expression which will give me all the codes inside a particular 'invoice' node. "'//invoices/invoice/obs/ob/code/text()" is not satisfying my requirement.

Dimos Over a year ago

root.xpath('//invoices/invoice[1]/obs/ob/code/text()') will give you all the codes inside the 1st 'invoice' node root.xpath('//invoices/invoice[1]/obs/ob[2]/code/text()') will give you the 2nd code inside the 1st 'invoice' node

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