XML Parsing

[Mathew Mintalm]

Hello, im parsing data from xml file, with this way:

		DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
		factory.setValidating(false);
		factory.setIgnoringComments(true);
		
		File file = new File(POLLS_FILE_PATH);
		
		if (!file.exists())
		{
			_log.warning("xml file does not exist, check directory!");
		}
		try
		{
			InputSource in = new InputSource(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(file), "UTF-8"));
			in.setEncoding("UTF-8");
			Document doc = factory.newDocumentBuilder().parse(in);
			
			for (Node n = doc.getFirstChild(); n != null; n = n.getNextSibling())
			{
				if (n.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("list"))
				{
					for (Node d = n.getFirstChild(); d != null; d = d.getNextSibling())
					{
						if (d.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("poll"))
						{
							int id = Integer.valueOf(d.getAttributes().getNamedItem("id").getNodeValue());	
							String name = String.valueOf(d.getAttributes().getNamedItem("name").getNodeValue());

I know how to get simple variables, but i would like to do like to get data from each node which name starts with "answer"

for example answer1="test" answer2="test2"

and add them to the List<String>

but i have no clue how to get value from every node witch name starts from "answer"

thanks in advance for help!

[Karthik Shiraly]

It's much easier to do this using XPath.

			InputSource inp = new InputSource(new FileReader(file));
			XPathFactory fct = XPathFactory.newInstance();
			XPath xpath = fct.newXPath();
			NodeList nodes = (NodeList) xpath.evaluate("//*[starts-with(name(), \"answer\")]", inp, XPathConstants.NODESET);
			for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
				System.out.println(nodes.item(i).getNodeName());
			}

The XPath expression
//*[starts-with(name(), "answer")]
means
//* => Select any node at any nesting depth...
[starts-with(name(), "answer"] => ...whose node name starts with "answer".

I'm assuming your XML is something like this:
<sometag> <somechildtag.../> <answer1..../> <answer2..../> <group> <answer10.../> </group> </sometag>
If your XML schema differs from this, change the selecting expression accordingly, and then suffix the starts-with predicate to it.