Getting values from SAX attributes when namespaces are involved.

Question

I'm using SAX to parse some XML. In my handler's startElement() method I'm trying to read the value of an attribute named xsi:type with something like:

String type = attributes.getValue("xsi:type");

However, it always returns null. This works fine for everything else so I'm assuming that it's due to the namespace prefix. How can I get this value?

Answer 1

Probably this can help, try to play a little with this. This will return the names and the value of the attributes found which can be useful to find the name to use to query.

if (attributes.getLength() > 0) {
  for (int i = 0; i < attributes.getLength(); i++) {
    System.out.print  ("name: " + attributes.getQName(i)));
    System.out.println(" value: " + attributes.getValue(i)));  
  }
}

Take also a look here and here check the function: getURI

Answer 2

Try asking SAX what it thinks the attribute's qName is:

for (int i=0; i < attributes.getLength(); i++) {
    String qName = attributes.getQName(i);
    System.out.println("qName for position " + i + ":  " + qName);
}