Trouble with XML parsing

Hello Java Geniuses,

I'm having trouble learning how to parse and XML with java. I'm starting with this simple XML file:

And here's the class I wrote to parse it:

package com.sample.xmlParser;

import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Iterator;

import javax.xml.stream.XMLEventReader;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLInputFactory;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamException;
import javax.xml.stream.events.Attribute;
import javax.xml.stream.events.StartElement;
import javax.xml.stream.events.XMLEvent;

public class simpleXmlParser {

@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
	public ArrayList<String> getFirstNodeName(String samplefile) {
		ArrayList<String> element = new ArrayList<String>();
		
		try {
			//create a new XMLInputFactory
			XMLInputFactory inputFactory = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
			//setup a new eventReader
			InputStream in = new FileInputStream(samplefile);
			XMLEventReader eventReader = inputFactory.createXMLEventReader(in);
		
			while (eventReader.hasNext()) {
				XMLEvent event = eventReader.nextEvent();
			
				if (event.isStartElement()) {
					StartElement startElement = event.asStartElement();
					if (startElement.getName().getLocalPart() == "note"){
					
						Iterator<Attribute> attributes = startElement.getAttributes();
						while (attributes.hasNext()) {
							Attribute attribute = attributes.next();
							element.add(attribute.getValue());
							
						}
					
					}
			
				}
			}	
		
		
		
		}catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		} catch (XMLStreamException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}		
		return element;
	}
	
	
}

And I'm testing it with this class:

This test is failing, saying the size of the ArrayList is 0, so it looks like the attribute values are not getting added to the ArrayList. I think I have some fundamental misunderstanding of how this is supposed to work, can anyone help me out?

Thanks!

The XML document that you posted doesn't have any attributes, so it is not at all surprising that your code doesn't find any attributes in it. You might want to take a minute to read about XML and find out what an attribute is.

Ah, there is my fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on.

Thanks!

I think this discussion would fit better in our XML forum: moving.