Eloquence Denied?: getElementsByTagName

From:
clusardi2k@aol.com
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Wed, 28 May 2014 06:04:12 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<de4b166f-4b14-4b56-9244-0d4745a64fc4@googlegroups.com>
Is there an alternative way to write the below program without hardcoding "person", "first", "last", and "age" or putting these into a file and reading the contents of a file.

Thank you,

 
import java.io.File;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.*;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.SAXParseException;

public class ReadAndPrintXMLFile{

    public static void main (String argv []){
    try {

            DocumentBuilderFactory docBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
            DocumentBuilder docBuilder = docBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
            Document doc = docBuilder.parse (new File("book.xml"));

            // normalize text representation
            doc.getDocumentElement ().normalize ();
            System.out.println ("Root element of the doc is " +
                 doc.getDocumentElement().getNodeName());

            NodeList listOfPersons = doc.getElementsByTagName("person");
            int totalPersons = listOfPersons.getLength();
            System.out.println("Total no of people : " + totalPersons);

            for(int s=0; s<listOfPersons.getLength() ; s++){

                Node firstPersonNode = listOfPersons.item(s);
                if(firstPersonNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE){

                    Element firstPersonElement = (Element)firstPersonNode;

                    //-------
                    NodeList firstNameList = firstPersonElement.getElementsByTagName("first");
                    Element firstNameElement = (Element)firstNameList.item(0);

                    NodeList textFNList = firstNameElement.getChildNodes();
                    System.out.println("First Name : " +
                           ((Node)textFNList.item(0)).getNodeValue().trim());

                    //-------
                    NodeList lastNameList = firstPersonElement.getElementsByTagName("last");
                    Element lastNameElement = (Element)lastNameList.item(0);

                    NodeList textLNList = lastNameElement.getChildNodes();
                    System.out.println("Last Name : " +
                           ((Node)textLNList.item(0)).getNodeValue().trim());

                    //----
                    NodeList ageList = firstPersonElement.getElementsByTagName("age");
                    Element ageElement = (Element)ageList.item(0);

                    NodeList textAgeList = ageElement.getChildNodes();
                    System.out.println("Age : " +
                           ((Node)textAgeList.item(0)).getNodeValue().trim());

                    //------

                }//end of if clause

            }//end of for loop with s var

        }catch (SAXParseException err) {
        System.out.println ("** Parsing error" + ", line "
             + err.getLineNumber () + ", uri " + err.getSystemId ());
        System.out.println(" " + err.getMessage ());

        }catch (SAXException e) {
        Exception x = e.getException ();
        ((x == null) ? e : x).printStackTrace ();

        }catch (Throwable t) {
        t.printStackTrace ();
        }
        //System.exit (0);

    }//end of main

}

/*

XML File
  <book>
<person>
  <first>Kiran</first>
  <last>Pai</last>
  <age>22</age>
</person>
<person>
  <first>Bill</first>
  <last>Gates</last>
  <age>46</age>
</person>
<person>
  <first>Steve</first>
  <last>Jobs</last>
  <age>40</age>
</person>
</book>
 
Program Output
 
Root element of the doc is book
 Total no of people : 3
 First Name : Kiran
 Last Name : Pai
 Age : 22
 First Name : Bill
 Last Name : Gates
 Age : 46
 First Name : Steve
 Last Name : Jobs
 Age : 40

*/

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