find whether an element exists by a particular tag name in XML

Question

Hi

I have an XML file where some sub tags (child node elements) are optional. e.g.

<part>
   <note>
       </rest>
   </note>

   <note>
       <pitch></pitch>
   </note>

   <note>
       <pitch></pitch>
   </note>
</part>

But when I read the XML files by tags, it throws a NullPointerException - since some sub-tags are optional (e.g. rest and pitch in above example). How can I filter this out? I couldn't come across any methods to find whether an element exists by a particular tag name. Even if I have a condition to check whether getElementsByTagName("tag-name") method not returns NULL - still it goes in the condition body and obviously throw the exception. How may I resolve this?

The java code is:

if(fstelm_Note.getElementsByTagName("rest")!=null){
    if(fstelm_Note.getElementsByTagName("rest")==null){
        break;
    }
    NodeList restElmLst = fstelm_Note.getElementsByTagName("rest");
    Element restElm = (Element)restElmLst.item(0);
    NodeList rest = restElm.getChildNodes();

    String restVal = ((Node)rest.item(0)).getNodeValue().toString();

}else if(fstelm_Note.getElementsByTagName("note")!=null){
    if(fstelm_Note.getElementsByTagName("note")==null){
        break;
    }

    NodeList noteElmLst = fstelm_Note.getElementsByTagName("note");
    Element noteElm = (Element)noteElmLst.item(0);

    NodeList note = noteElm.getChildNodes();
    String noteVal = ((Node)note.item(0)).getNodeValue().toString();
}

Any insight or suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It may be that your NodeLists are not null, but are empty. Can you try changing your code like this and see what happens?

NodeList restElmLst = fstelm_Note.getElementsByTagName("rest");
if (restElmLst != null && !restElmLst.isEmpty())
{
    Element restElm = (Element)rests.item(0);
...

etc. (Doublecheck syntax etc., since I'm not in front of a compiler.)

Answer 2

Your requirements are extremely unclear but I would very likely use the javax.xml.xpath package to parse your XML document with the XML Path Language (XPath).

Have a look at:

• XML Validation and XPath Evaluation in J2SE 5.0
• Parsing an XML Document with XPath

But you should try to explain the general problem you are trying to solve rather than the specific problem you're facing. But doing so, 1. you will probably get better answers and 2. the current chosen path might not be the best one.