Finding maximum node depth of an xml dom tree

[Swethar Kalki]

How do I find the maximum node depth of an xml file using dom in java?

[Tim Moores]

Does it need to be DOM? I'm almost (but not quite) certain that you could write a one-line XPath expression to determine that value.

[William Brogden]

Obviously you are going to have to traverse the entire document.

With DOM you would use the methods in org.w3c.dom.Node to work through the whole tree.

It would be a lot easier in SAX or StaX.

Using SAX you could increment a "depth" counter with every startElement and decrement with every endElement, tracking the highest value of course.


Do you need to also remember the deepest Node?

Bill