Question

I have the following code for converting the elements of an XML file into a String using Stax:

private static XMLStreamReader getReader(InputStream inputStream) throws XMLStreamException {
    XMLInputFactory xmlInputFactory = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
    xmlInputFactory.setProperty("javax.xml.stream.isValidating", false);
    xmlInputFactory.setProperty("javax.xml.stream.supportDTD", false);
    XMLStreamReader xmlStreamReader = xmlInputFactory.createXMLStreamReader(inputStream);
    return xmlStreamReader;
}

private static String readElement(XMLStreamReader reader) throws XMLStreamException, TransformerException {
    TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
    Transformer t = tf.newTransformer();
    ByteArrayOutputStream outputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    StAXSource source = new StAXSource(reader);
    t.transform(source, new StreamResult(outputStream));
    return outputStream.toString();
}

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("c:\\temp\\test.xml");

    XMLStreamReader xmlStreamReader = getReader(inputStream);
    int count = 0;
    while (xmlStreamReader.hasNext()) {
        int eventType = xmlStreamReader.next();
        if (eventType == XMLEvent.START_ELEMENT) {
            String elementName = xmlStreamReader.getName().getLocalPart();
            if (!elementName.toLowerCase().equals("element")) {
                continue;
            }
            String productStr = readElement(xmlStreamReader);
            System.out.println(productStr);
        }
    }
}

}

This works fine on the following XML fragment:

<testDoc>
  <element>
    <a>hello world</a>
    <b>hello world again</b>
  </element>
  <element>
    <a>foo</a>
    <b>foo bar</b>
  </element>
</testDoc>

However, there are problems with this fragment where the </element> and <element> are on the same line:

<testDoc>
  <element>
    <a>hello world</a>
    <b>hello world again</b>
  </element><element>
    <a>foo</a>
    <b>foo bar</b>
  </element>
</testDoc>

In the second example it only seems to process the first element and not the second one. Any ideas?

Update:

I got it to work with the following code:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("c:\\temp\\test.xml");

    XMLStreamReader xmlStreamReader = getReader(inputStream);
    int count = 0;
    while (xmlStreamReader.hasNext()) {
        int eventType = xmlStreamReader.getEventType();
        if (eventType == XMLEvent.START_ELEMENT) {
            String elementName = xmlStreamReader.getName().getLocalPart();
            if (!elementName.toLowerCase().equals("element")) {
                xmlStreamReader.next();
                continue;
            }

            System.out.println(readElement(xmlStreamReader));
        } else {
            xmlStreamReader.next();
        }

    }
}

Answer 1

Looks like a bug to me. You don’t say which Stax parser you are using: some of them are pretty ropey. Woodstox is the most reliable.