Java Tips - Saving a DOM tree to XML file javax.xml.parsers (JAXP)

One of main DOM disadvantages is that it does not contain means to save created or modified documents. Thus, if we want to create new DOM-contents and save it to a file we have to write own serializer. Some XML packages like Xerces-J has such enhancement classes allowing to write DOM-tree to a file. But it is not defined in DOM standards. A sample below demonstrates how to use extended API to save DOM:


import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;



import org.apache.xml.serialize.XMLSerializer;



import org.w3c.dom.*;



/**

 * This sample program shows how to save new document

 * to a file using Xerces-J class XMLSerializer.

 */



public class Test {

  public static void main(String[] args) {

    try {

    // first of all we request out DOM-implementation:

    DocumentBuilderFactory factory = 

      DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();

    // then we have to create document-loader:

    DocumentBuilder loader = factory.newDocumentBuilder();



    // createing a new DOM-document...

    Document document = loader.newDocument();



    // create root-element

    Element order = document.createElement("purchase-order");

    document.appendChild(order);

    // ... compose the rest document content ...

    

    // use specific Xerces class to write DOM-data to a file:

    XMLSerializer serializer = new XMLSerializer();

    serializer.setOutputCharStream(

      new java.io.FileWriter("order.xml"));

    serializer.serialize(document);



    } catch (Exception ex) {

      ex.printStackTrace();

    }

  }

}

Document doc = db.parse(...); TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance(); Transformer t = tf.newTransformer(); t.transform(new DOMSource(doc), new StreamResult(System.out));

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