XML Document to String

Question

What's the simplest way to get the String representation of a XML Document (org.w3c.dom.Document)? That is all nodes will be on a single line.

As an example, from

<root>
  <a>trge</a>
  <b>156</b>
</root>

(this is only a tree representation, in my code it's a org.w3c.dom.Document object, so I can't treat it as a String)

to

"<root> <a>trge</a> <b>156</b> </root>"

Thanks!

Dupe of stackoverflow.com/questions/315517/…

james.garriss
– james.garriss

2013-08-01 15:50:35 +00:00
Commented Aug 1, 2013 at 15:50 — james.garriss
– james.garriss, Commented Aug 1, 2013 at 15:50
iandjava.blogspot.in/2013/06/…

Ashish Aggarwal
– Ashish Aggarwal

2014-01-14 10:00:36 +00:00
Commented Jan 14, 2014 at 10:00 — Ashish Aggarwal
– Ashish Aggarwal, Commented Jan 14, 2014 at 10:00

WhiteFang34 · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-28 09:11:55Z

236

Assuming doc is your instance of org.w3c.dom.Document:

TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tf.newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
transformer.transform(new DOMSource(doc), new StreamResult(writer));
String output = writer.getBuffer().toString().replaceAll("\n|\r", "");

answered Mar 28, 2011 at 9:11

WhiteFang34

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4 Comments

bvdb Over a year ago

the replaceAll is probably not necessary if you add another output property: transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "no");

bvdb Over a year ago

and the writer.getBuffer().toString() can just be writer.toString()

Jonathan Benn Over a year ago

@bvdb both excellent points. There is an extra advantage to explicitly adding the OutputKeys.INDENT line, because then you can also set it to "yes" to keep the whitespace--if that's what you want (in my situation I've found that just removing replaceAll did not work to include the whitespace in the string).

Jonathan Benn Over a year ago

See also stackoverflow.com/questions/1384802/… for an explanation of how to get the indent to work properly

GuruKulki · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-28 09:03:19Z

1

Use the Apache XMLSerializer

here's an example: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=31349&seqNum=3&rl=1

you can check this as well

http://www.netomatix.com/XmlFileToString.aspx

answered Mar 28, 2011 at 9:03

GuruKulki

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1 Comment

Infernoz Over a year ago

Xerces is still, ridiculously, not officially distributing via Maven (thus groovy too), including no reliable source or JavaDocs, WTF! No official maven support makes deprecation resolution harder, makes consistent updates more hassle, and poses security risks, so it is stupid to have any dependencies on it now!

bluish · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-22 10:52:49Z

1

First you need to get rid of all newline characters in all your text nodes. Then you can use an identity transform to output your DOM tree. Look at the javadoc for TransformerFactory#newTransformer().

edited Mar 22, 2012 at 10:52

bluish

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answered Mar 28, 2011 at 9:07

forty-two

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