XMLFormatter issue with combimation of LF and CR LF

Question

I am doing XML Format using dom4j Outpurformat and Document objects.

I am setting lineseparator based on OS if Win -> \\r\\n and Linux -> \\n

If I pass single line xml file it working fine getting expected EOL ( CR LF ).

But If I pass multiple line xml file whatever the existing line comes with ( LF ) new lines are comes with ( CR LF )

ex : Input file :

    <root>
      <emp>
        <name>myname</name>
      </emp>
    </root>

output :

    <root> LF
    CR LF
      <emp>LF
    CR LF
        <name>myname</name>LF
    CR LF
      </emp>LF
    CR LF
    </root>LF
    CR LF

I have tried to replace the EOL still not working I tried both way

xmlContent= xmlContent.replaceAll("\n","\r\n")
xmlContent = xmlContent.replaceAll("\\n","\r\n")

Its working fine in linux as expected all time "LF", but the above mentioned problem is on windows host. its coming with combination of LF and CF LF.

Answer 1

String are immutable in java. So have to replace line breaks and assign to variable.

• CR = \\r; - Carriage Return
• LF = \\n; - Line Feed

• CRLF = \\r\\n - End of Line

  xmlContent = xmlContent.replaceAll("\\r\\n","").repalceAll("\\n","").repalceAll("\\r","");;

Answer 2

It seems to me that the behavior of dom4j is correct. It just add newline (CR+LF for a windows os) while indenting output. The extra LF are coming from the original file (which i guess use the unix convention). The xml parser interprets the LF in inputs as text nodes so you get them on the output too. What if you try

xmlContent = xmlContent.replaceAll("\x0a","")

Otherwise you could configure your xml reader to ignore whitespace

SAXReader xmlReader = new SAXReader();
xmlReader.setStripWhitespaceText(true);

but this will affect the white spaces inside elements too.