How to iterate Xml file in Java and create objects from it

Question

I have a Xml file which I iterate like this:

List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();

for (int i = 0; i < nList.getLength(); i++) {

        Node nNode = nList.item(i);

        System.out.println("\nCurrent Element: " + nNode.getNodeName());

        if (nNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {

            Element elem = (Element) nNode;

            Node id = elem.getElementsByTagName("id").item(0);
            Node key = elem.getElementsByTagName("key").item(0);
            if (id.getTextContent().length() > 0) {
                String identifier = id.getTextContent();
                String key2 = key.getTextContent();

                System.out.println("id: " + identifier);
                System.out.println("key: " + key2);

                list.add(identifier);
                list.add(key2);

            }
        }
    }

That works and as you can see, I can add the values to a list of Strings but that's not what I want to do. I want to make a list of objects from those string values, lke this:

[{"id": identifier, "key": key2}] .

I've tried many ways but nothing seems to work, there must be some simple way in Java also to add those strings as a key-value pairs in a list?

Answer 1

Here:

List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();

If you dont want to collect Strings , then say so:

List<Map<String, String>> list = new ArrayList<>();

And then, instead of adding strings:

list.add(identifier);
list.add(key2)

You could do:

list.add(Collections.singletonMap(identifier, key2);

or something alike.