Deleting records from XML file--just a little problem

Question

Hi!
My xml file has a simple form like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<AdressBook>
    <Name>Suzy</Name>
    <Lastname>Love</Lastname>
    <Adress>You street 22</Adress>
    <Phone>911</Phone>
    <Email>[email protected]</Email>
  </Record>
<Record>
   <Name>Judy</Name>
   <Lastname>Goblin</Lastname>
   <Adress>Milkyway</Adress>
   <Phone>911</Phone>
  <Email>[email protected]</Email>
</Record>
</AdressBook>Now, whenever I delete a record from that file it leaves a remaining tag <Record /> on the loction were previous record was. How do I delete that remaining tag or better yet, how do I delete Record element in whole. I am using jdom.
Here is the code I use to delete records:
public void deleteRecordFromFile(Record r)
          Element root=doc.getRootElement();
          List records=root.getChildren();
          Iterator listIt=records.iterator();
          while(listIt.hasNext())
               Element rec=(Element)listIt.next();
               Record p=new Record("","","","","");
               List recChildren=rec.getChildren();
               Element e=null;
               for( int i=0;i<recChildren.size();i++)
                    e=(Element)recChildren.get(i);
                    switch (i)
                    case 0: p.setName(e.getText()); break;
                    case 1: p.setLastName(e.getText());break;
                    case 2: p.setAddress(e.getText());break;
                    case 3: p.setPhone(e.getText());break;
                    case 4: p.setEmail(e.getText());break;
                    default: ;
               if(p.equals(r))
                    rec.removeContent();
                    System.out.println("Record deleted!");
          writeToFile(filename);
     }Like you see above I use the method removeContent(), should I use some other method? I need to get rid of that remaining tags in order to make my editing of the records stored in there easier. I guess I could make a seperate routine that would clean my file of those tags, but I think that is just too much time consuming...or not?
Please help me out here.:)
Message was edited by:
byteminister

Answer 1

You cannot remove the elements of a List while iterating over them without the risk of throwing a ConcurrentModificationException, whatever method you would use. So you can only delete the records in two steps: collect them all, and delete them afterwards.
public void deleteRecordFromFile(Record r)
          Element root=doc.getRootElement();
          List records=root.getChildren();
          Iterator listIt=records.iterator();
          // Create a container for storing references to the records that will be deleted.
          ArrayList<Element> deleteList = new ArrayList<Element>();
          while(listIt.hasNext())
               Element rec=(Element)listIt.next();
               Record p=new Record("","","","","");
               List recChildren=rec.getChildren();
               Element e=null;
               for( int i=0;i<recChildren.size();i++)
                    e=(Element)recChildren.get(i);
                    switch (i)
                    case 0: p.setName(e.getText()); break;
                    case 1: p.setLastName(e.getText());break;
                    case 2: p.setAddress(e.getText());break;
                    case 3: p.setPhone(e.getText());break;
                    case 4: p.setEmail(e.getText());break;
                    default: ;
               if(p.equals(r))
                    // This record will be deleted.
                    deleteList.add(rec);
          // Delete all the records in deleteList.
          records.removeAll(deleteList);
          writeToFile(filename);
     }