Question

Attached are two screen shots, and my code. I am trying to get the animation_sequence as a closing and ending bracket, I’ve tried my best but now I seek your help. Please help. The code I have produces it as a

Code:

 DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document testDoc = builder.parse(new File("./data/sprite_types/" + spriteName + "/" + spriteName + ".xml"));
        Element state = testDoc.createElement("state");
        state.setTextContent(element);
        Element animationState = testDoc.createElement("animation_state");
        Element sequence = testDoc.createElement("animation_sequence");
        testDoc.getElementsByTagName("animations_list").item(0).appendChild(animationState).appendChild(state);
        testDoc.getElementsByTagName("animation_state").item(testDoc.getElementsByTagName("state").getLength() - 1).appendChild(sequence);
        DOMSource source = new DOMSource(testDoc);
        PrintStream ps = new PrintStream("./data/sprite_types/" + spriteName + "/" + spriteName + ".xml");
        StreamResult result = new StreamResult(ps);
        TransformerFactory transformerFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();
        transformer.transform(source, result);

Answer 1

The reason is that you’re creating the animation_sequence element but not creating any child node under it. Effectively, you are creating an empty element. Empty elements, when serialized to string, will always appear as <tag/>, rather than <tag></tag>.

To avoid this, you need to add an empty Text node as a child node of the animation_sequence element:

sequence.appendChild(testDoc.createTextNode(""));

(Or, if you use Commons Lang, replace "" with StringUtils.EMPTY)