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Modifying xml tag value using java

renu richard
Ranch Hand

Joined: Oct 06, 2008
Messages: 109

Hi,

I have an xml file with some tags repeating. I need to update a tag value with some value. That particular tag is determined by its sibling tag value.

Can someone tell me using what i can achieve this. Or some example for doing the same.

Regards,
Ren

Cheers

Richard
Jim Hoglund
Ranch Hand

Joined: Jan 09, 2008
Messages: 124

Ren : Sounds like a job for regular expressions, or "regex" for short. Here are
a couple of good resources. This first is introductory the second more advanced.
Good luck.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/regex/index.html

http://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.html

Jim...
Wouter Oet
Ranch Hand

Joined: Oct 25, 2008
Messages: 497

I don't think that regex is a suitable solutions for this problem because then you'll lose a lot of the flexibility of xml. Although I don't have any experience with it I would recommend you to look at a java XQuery implementation.

"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand.
Good programmers write code that humans can understand." --- Martin Fowler
Paul Clapham
Bartender

Joined: Oct 14, 2005
Messages: 7187

In general regular expressions are useless when working with tree-structured data. If you have a trivial XML document and you're willing to take the risk that the part you are changing isn't going to run into conflicts with the XML escaping rules then a regex might work, but usually the way to do that is to parse the document, change the "tag value", and serialize it out to a new document.
Jim Hoglund
Ranch Hand

Joined: Jan 09, 2008
Messages: 124

Paul Clapham wrote:... but usually the way to do that is to parse the document, change the "tag value", and serialize it out to a new document.

This is what I had in mind. To me the problem seemed to invite string
manipulation. Is the fact that it happens to be XML relevant? I suppose
it could be if XML libraries offer some cool tools to help.

Jim...
 
 
 
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