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Use of XPath in Java: Part 1

Introduction 

 
XPath is a query language for traversinig through XML files. It is a syntax for defining parts of XML documents.  It uses a path expression to navigate through XML documents.
  
Xpath expressions are of great help when we want to operate on a specific node in an XML document.  I will be creating a XML file and then, I will create a Java class to read that file and use XPath expressions, to navigate through elements in XML.  The following procedure will help you in performing some operations.
 
1. I have created a XML file named file.xml and placed it in my E drive. The File.xml content is:
  1. < Technologies > < Node0 > .Net < Node1 > Abstract < Node2 > Class < Node3 > Oops < /Node3></Node2 > < /Node1><Node1>CLR</Node1 > < /Node0><Node0>Java</Node0 > < Node0 > PHP < /Node0><Node0>C#</Node0 > < /Technologies>    
2. Now, we will create a Java class file to read this XML file and then, do various XPath operations on this file.  The code to read the XML file is:
  1. File f = new File("E:\\file.xml");  
  2. Document doc = null;  
  3. DocumentBuilderFactory docFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();  
  4. DocumentBuilder docBuilder;  
  5. docBuilder = docFactory.newDocumentBuilder();  
  6. doc = docBuilder.parse(f);  
  7. doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();  
3. Now, we will create an instance of XPath and then, will use expressions to navigate through the XML
  1. XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();  
  1. The following is an Expression to get the root element of the XML file.
    1. NodeList name = (NodeList) xpath.compile("/*").evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);  
  1. This expression will return a NodeList and we will get the element name of the root node, used for a loop.  The code is as follows:
    1. for (int i = 0; i < name.getLength(); i++) {  
    2.  System.out.println(name.item(i).getNodeName());  
    3. }  
    The output after the running this code is:
     
    Technologies
     
  2. The following is an Expression to get the text of all Node0 elements.
    1. NodeList name = (NodeList) xpath.compile("//Node0/text()").evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);  
    This expression will return a NodeList and we can get the text content of all the nodes used for a loop. The code is as follows.
    1. for (int i = 0; i < name.getLength(); i++) {  
    2.  System.out.println(name.item(i).getTextContent());  
    3. }  
    The output after running this code is:
     
    .Net
     
    Java
     
    PHP
     
    C#
     
  3. The following, is an Expression to get all the child nodes inside of a specific node (Node0).
    1. NodeList name = (NodeList) xpath.compile("//Node0/*").evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);  
    This expression will return a NodeList and we can get the text content, of all the nodes, using a for loop.  The code is as follows:
    1. for (int i = 0; i < name.getLength(); i++) {  
    2.  System.out.println(name.item(i).getTextContent());  
    3. }  
    The output after running this code is:
     
    Abstract
     
    Class
     
    Oops
     
    CLR
     
  4. The following is an Expression, to get the element names of all the children, of a specific node (Node0).
    1. NodeList name = (NodeList) xpath.compile("//Node0/*").evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);  
    This expression will return a NodeList and we get the element name of the root node, used for a loop.  The code is as follows:
    1. for (int i = 0; i < name.getLength(); i++) {  
    2.  System.out.println(name.item(i).getNodeName());  
    3. }  
    The output after the running this code is:
     
    Node1
     
    Node1
I will be coming up with XPath operators and more expressions in future articles.  I hope this article was useful to you.


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