Problem with a return with SAX

[Maky Chopra]

Hi
I have an XML file that contains a file layout, say <fieldname> and <fieldsize>
Lets say I do my parsing in a class called FileLayout and in my main() - in another program - I do,
FileLayout fl = new FileLayout();
.
.
and then parse the file..
while parsing, I do

 public void characters(char[] chars, int iStart, int iLen) {
        if (_isName) {
            fieldName = new String(chars, iStart, iLen);
            nameTable.add(fieldName);
        }
        if (_isSize) {
            fieldSize = new String(chars, iStart, iLen);
            sizeTable.add(fieldSize);
        }

The nameTable and sizeTable are Vectors and in FileLayout, I have a getFieldNames that return nameTable
The problem is that unless I declare these two vectors static, the return statement returns null.
Whats going wrong here ?

[Karthik Guru]

can you post the FileLayout class. Am not very clear as to why that should happen.

[Raf Van de Plas]

Hi,
a small remark here that's probably not the solution to you original problem, but what the hell...
In SAX a DefaultHandler doesn't garantee to read the characters between a start and end tag in one go. For example, if you've got '<moviename>The Terminator</moviename>', depending on the parser implementation, you can have one characters()-event giving you "The Terminator" but you can just as well have 6 character()-events that give you "Th", "e T", "erm", "in", "a", "tor".
Bottom line: don't perform your string adding in the characters()event but just append it to a StringBuffer there and the process the content of the buffer in the endElement()-event.
Just something I wanted to say,
Raf
The Angry Belgian

[Maky Chopra]

Karthik, here's the class..

package mypackage;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.Vector ;
import org.xml.sax.*;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.ParserFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;
public class FileLayout extends HandlerBase {
    boolean _isName = false;
    boolean _isSize  = false;
    
    public [B]static[/B] Vector nameTable = new Vector();
    public [B]static[/B] Vector sizeTable = new Vector();
    
    public String fieldName ;
    public String fieldSize ;
    public FileLayout() {
        super();
    }

    public void parseFileFormat(String xmlURI) {
        FileLayout xmlInput = new FileLayout();
        try {
            Parser parser = ParserFactory.makeParser("org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser");
            parser.setDocumentHandler(xmlInput);
            parser.parse(new InputSource(xmlURI));
        } catch (Exception ex) {}
    }
    public Vector getFieldNames() {
        return nameTable ;
    }
    public Vector getFieldSize() {
        return sizeTable ;
    }
    public void startElement(String element, AttributeList attrlist) {
        if (element.toLowerCase().equals("name")) {
            _isName = true;
        }
        if (element.toLowerCase().equals("size")) {
            _isSize = true ;
        }
    }
    public void endElement(String element) {
        if (element.toLowerCase().equals("name")) {
            _isName = false;
        }
        if (element.toLowerCase().equals("size")) {
            _isSize = false ;
        }
    }
    public void characters(char[] chars, int iStart, int iLen) {
        if (_isName) {
            fieldName = new String(chars, iStart, iLen);
            nameTable.add(fieldName);
        }
        if (_isSize) {
            fieldSize = new String(chars, iStart, iLen);
            sizeTable.add(fieldSize);
        }
}
}