getting Document fragment as String

[manuel aldana]

hi,

i want to get a string from a fragment of Document. something like:

public String getStringFromDocumentElement(Element element);

param element is a node somewhere in a Document.
i thought i could import given element to another document and write it to a StringWriter. or just by passing it as a Node directly to the following:

public static String getStringFromElement(Element el) {
  try {
    DOMSource domSource = new DOMSource(el);
    StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
    StreamResult result = new StreamResult(writer);
    TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
    Transformer transformer = tf.newTransformer();
    transformer.transform(domSource, result);
    return writer.toString();
  } catch (Exception e) {
            ...
  }
}

but it does not work. to me it is an obvious functionality to get a document fragment as a String. but i haven't found anything on the net so far.

thanks.

[Paul Clapham]

Yes, that is exactly how you do it. Could you give some information beyond "does not work"?

[manuel aldana]

hi,

yes you're right it works this way. the error i had, was that a whitespace sneeked in and therefore not an element was printed but a text element.

i did check this mistake, because i had a different signature as in my first post and therefore did not get a ClassCastException (passing in a text node instead of element).

//NOT receiving ClassCastException passing in text node
public String getStringFromElement(Node node){...}


//receiving ClassCastException passing in text node
public String getStringFromElement(Element element){...}