Java XPath Parser – Query XML Document

Demo Example

Here is the input text file that we need to query −

<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<class>
   <student rollno = "393">
      <firstname>dinkar</firstname>
      <lastname>kad</lastname>
      <nickname>dinkar</nickname>
      <marks>85</marks>
   </student>
   
   <student rollno = "493">
      <firstname>Vaneet</firstname>
      <lastname>Gupta</lastname>
      <nickname>vinni</nickname>
      <marks>95</marks>
   </student>
   
   <student rollno = "593">
      <firstname>jasvir</firstname>
      <lastname>singn</lastname>
      <nickname>jazz</nickname>
      <marks>90</marks>
   </student>
</class>

XPathParserDemo.java

package com.adglob.xml;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPath;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathConstants;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathExpressionException;
import javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory;

import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

public class XPathParserDemo {

   public static void main(String[] args) {
      
      try {
         File inputFile = new File("input.txt");
         DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
         DocumentBuilder dBuilder;

         dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();

         Document doc = dBuilder.parse(inputFile);
         doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();

         XPath xPath =  XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();

         String expression = "/class/student[@rollno = '493']";
         NodeList nodeList = (NodeList) xPath.compile(expression).evaluate(
            doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);
         
         for (int i = 0; i < nodeList.getLength(); i++) {
            Node nNode = nodeList.item(i);
            System.out.println("\nCurrent Element :" + nNode.getNodeName());
            
            if (nNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
               Element eElement = (Element) nNode;
               System.out.println("Student roll no : " 
                  + eElement.getAttribute("rollno"));
               System.out.println("First Name : " 
                  + eElement
                  .getElementsByTagName("firstname")
                  .item(0)
                  .getTextContent());
               System.out.println("Last Name : " 
                  + eElement
                  .getElementsByTagName("lastname")
                  .item(0)
                  .getTextContent());
               System.out.println("Nick Name : " 
                  + eElement
                  .getElementsByTagName("nickname")
                  .item(0)
                  .getTextContent());
               System.out.println("Marks : " 
                  + eElement
                  .getElementsByTagName("marks")
                  .item(0)
                  .getTextContent());
            }
         }
      } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      } catch (SAXException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      } catch (IOException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      } catch (XPathExpressionException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      }
   }
}

This would produce the following result −

Current Element :student
Student roll no : 493
First Name : Vaneet
Last Name : Gupta
Nick Name : vinni
Marks : 95

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