Java, XPath Expression to read all node names, node values, and attributes

Question

I need help in make an xpath expression to read all node names, node values, and attributes in an xml string. I made this:

private List<String> listOne = new ArrayList<String>();
private List<String> listTwo = new ArrayList<String>();

public void read(String xml) {
    try {
        // Turn String into a Document
        Document document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance()
                .newDocumentBuilder().parse(new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.getBytes()));

        // Setup XPath to retrieve all tags and values
        XPath xPath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
        NodeList nodeList = (NodeList) xPath.evaluate("//text()[normalize-space()='']", document, XPathConstants.NODESET);

        // Iterate through nodes
        for(int i = 0; i < nodeList.getLength(); i++) {
            Node node = nodeList.item(i);
            listOne.add(node.getNodeName());
            listTwo.add(node.getNodeValue());
            // Another list to hold attributes
        }

    } catch(Exception e) {
        LogHandle.info(e.getMessage());
    }
}

I found the expression //text()[normalize-space()=''] online; however, it doesn't work. When I get try to get the node name from listOne , it is just #text . I tried // , but that doesn't work either. If I had this XML:

<Data xmlns="Somenamespace.nsc">
    <Test>blah</Test>
    <Foo>bar</Foo>
    <Date id="2">12242016</Date>
    <Phone>
        <Home>5555555555</Home>
        <Mobile>5555556789</Mobile>
    </Phone>
</Data>

listOne[0] should hold Data , listOne[1] should hold Test , listTwo[1] should hold blah , etc... All the attributes will be saved in another parallel list.

What expression should xPath evaluate?

Note: The XML String can have different tags, so I can't hard code anything.

Update : Tried this loop:

NodeList nodeList = (NodeList) xPath.evaluate("//*", document, XPathConstants.NODESET);

// Iterate through nodes
for(int i = 0; i < nodeList.getLength(); i++) {
    Node node = nodeList.item(i);

    listOne.add(i, node.getNodeName());

    // If null then must be text node
    if(node.getChildNodes() == null)
        listTwo.add(i, node.getTextContent());
}

However, this only gets the root element Data , then just stops.

Answer 1

//* will select all element nodes, //@* all attribute nodes. However, an element node does not have a meaningful node value in the DOM, so you would need to read out getTextContent() instead of getNodeValue .

As you seem to consider an element with child elements to have a "null" value I think you need to check whether there are any child elements:

    DocumentBuilderFactory docBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    docBuilderFactory.setNamespaceAware(true);

    DocumentBuilder docBuilder = docBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();

    Document doc = docBuilder.parse("sampleInput1.xml");

    XPathFactory fact = XPathFactory.newInstance();
    XPath xpath = fact.newXPath();

    NodeList allElements = (NodeList)xpath.evaluate("//*", doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);

    ArrayList<String> elementNames = new ArrayList<>();
    ArrayList<String> elementValues = new ArrayList<>();

    for (int i = 0; i < allElements.getLength(); i++)
    {
        Node currentElement = allElements.item(i);
        elementNames.add(i, currentElement.getLocalName());
        elementValues.add(i, xpath.evaluate("*", currentElement, XPathConstants.NODE) != null ? null : currentElement.getTextContent());
    }

    for (int i = 0; i < elementNames.size(); i++)
    {
        System.out.println("Name: " + elementNames.get(i) + "; value: " + (elementValues.get(i)));
    }

For the sample input

<Data xmlns="Somenamespace.nsc">
    <Test>blah</Test>
    <Foo>bar</Foo>
    <Date id="2">12242016</Date>
    <Phone>
        <Home>5555555555</Home>
        <Mobile>5555556789</Mobile>
    </Phone>
</Data>

the output is

Name: Data; value: null
Name: Test; value: blah
Name: Foo; value: bar
Name: Date; value: 12242016
Name: Phone; value: null
Name: Home; value: 5555555555
Name: Mobile; value: 5555556789