Convert text file into XML

[Vasant Chandra]

Hello All,
I am having a very urgent requirement to convert below fixed length text file into XML file. Please help me in achieveing the same.
Few points: Every line consist of 16 characters
First 3 caharacter (like D02,D03 etc will not be included in the message, coming from the sender just for reference))
Every new record will start from "H" character.
059 (occurrence 1), 040 (occurrence 1) and 084 (more than 1 occ) are the key fields to identify new segment (highlighted below)
The fields within the segments are fixed length (shown below).


File structure:

H01A12B1059C1DE1
D02F12040G123H12
D033084002L123M1
D04234NO12P12Q12
D05R4RR2V1234567


<Record>
<Header>....................1..unbounded
<Key>H</Key>
<Filed1>A12</Field2>
<Field2>B1</field2>
<One>
<Key>059</Key>
<Field3>C1</Field3>
<Field4>D</Field4>
<Field5>E1</Field5>
<Field6>F12</Field6>
</One>
<Two>
<Key>040</key>
<Field7>G123</Field7>
<Field8>H123</Field8>
</Two>
<Three>
<Key>084</Key>
<Occ>002</occ>
<Repeat>............................1..unbounded
<Field9>L123</Field9>
<Field10>M1234</Field10>
<Field11>NO12P12</Field11>
</Repeat>
<Repeat>
<Field9>Q12R</Field9>
<Field10>4RR2V</Field10>
<Field11>1234567</Field11>
</Repeat>
</Three>
</Header>
</Record>


Regards!!

[Ulf Dittmer]

Seems relatively easy. What do have so far? Where are you stuck making progress?

[Vasant Chandra]

Ulf Dittmer wrote:Seems relatively easy. What do have so far? Where are you stuck making progress?

Hi,
Thanks a lot for the reply!!
I am not from a java domain so not sure how i will convert this fixed file into xml as shown above.
Do you have any pointers, or if possible please share the raw peice of code i will try to manipulate it.
Thanks In Advance.

Regards!!

[Volodymyr Levytskyi]

Hello!

To create XML files as well as read them you should use Document Object Model. For example:

if (selectedFile.getAbsolutePath().endsWith(".xml")) {
            DocumentBuilderFactory builderFact = DocumentBuilderFactory
                    .newInstance();

            try {
                DocumentBuilder builder = builderFact.newDocumentBuilder();
                Document document = builder.parse(new FileInputStream(selectedFile));
                NodeList nodeList = document.getElementsByTagName("person");

                for (int i = 0; i < nodeList.getLength(); i++) {
                    Element currentPerson = (Element) nodeList.item(i);

                    Long id = Long.valueOf(currentPerson.getAttribute("id"));
                    String type = currentPerson.getAttribute("type");
                    String fname = getNestedElement(currentPerson, "firstName");
                    String lname = getNestedElement(currentPerson, "lastName");
                    String role = getNestedElement(currentPerson, "role");

                    Object[] rowData = new Object[]{id, type, fname, lname, role};
                    tableModel.addRow(rowData);

                    PreparedStatement prepareStatement = connection.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO APP.PERSON VALUES(?, ?, ?, ?, ?)");
                    prepareStatement.setLong(1, id);
                    prepareStatement.setString(2, type.toUpperCase());
                    prepareStatement.setString(3, fname);
                    prepareStatement.setString(4, lname);
                    prepareStatement.setString(5, role);

                    statements.add(prepareStatement);
                }
            } catch (Exception ex) {
                Logger.getLogger(mainFrame.class
                        .getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);

                try {
                    connection.rollback();
                } catch (SQLException ex1) {
                    Logger.getLogger(mainFrame.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex1);
                }
            }

Method getNestedElement:

private String getNestedElement(Element currentPerson, String name) {
        // Here I extract all elements with name "name" from parent element
        // named "parent":
        NodeList list = currentPerson.getElementsByTagName(name);
        // Here I take first element named with string 'name':
        Element element = (Element) list.item(0);
        // I extract text node and get its value:
        String cdata = element.getFirstChild().getNodeValue();
        return cdata;
    }

Above code parses this xml file:

<persons>
  <person id="1232445" type="fullTime">
    <firstName>John</firstName>
    <lastName>Doe</lastName>
    <role>Accountant</role>		
  </person>
<person id="4356777" type="partTime">
    <firstName>Kevin</firstName>
    <lastName>Mouse</lastName>
    <role>CEO</role>		
  </person>
</persons>

[Ulf Dittmer]

If you haven't worked with XML in Java before, then the easiest may be to use the classes in the java.io package to read the flat file and then write out the properly formatted XML file.

[Vasant Chandra]

Volodymyr Levytskyi wrote:
To create XML files as well as read them you should use Document Object Model. For example:

Hello,
Thanks for the reply!!
It looks that you are parsing/reading the XML file and converting it into text but i want just the opposite of this. I want to read the text file(shown above) and then convert it into XML format. Can you please share the code for the same.

Thanks!!

[Vasant Chandra]

Hi,

Ulf Dittmer wrote:If you haven't worked with XML in Java before, then the easiest may be to use the classes in the java.io package to read the flat file and then write out the properly formatted XML file.

Do you have any sample code for the same which reads scattered fixed length data and convert into XML.

Thanks

[Ulf Dittmer]

No. If you haven't used java.io before, now may be a good time to learn about it. The Oracle Java Tutorial will get you started, as will any introductory book.