DOM nodes serialized using LSSerializer.writeToString() looses formatting

Question

Hi All,
I am trying to serialize DOM nodes into a serialized string, and facing the below problem,
where I am loosing all the formatting ( new lines, spaces ) in the process.
Basically here is how the whole process can be outlined:
1. I take a formatted xml request sample String:
<Batch>
<Request1>
<Content>abc</Content>
</Request1>
<Request2>
<Content>efg</Content>
</Request2>
</Batch>
2. Feed it into a Dom parser to parse the xml string and convert it into DOM objects
public void parse( String xmlModel ) throws Exception {     
          if( xmlModel == null ){
               throw new Exception( "No xml model string was supplied for parsing");
          else{
               this.xmlModel = xmlModel;
          // Now try building the document
          try{
               DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
               dbf.setNamespaceAware(true);
               //parse the xml file.
               DocumentBuilder parser = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
               parser.setErrorHandler(new ErrorHandlerImpl());
               // ByteArrayInputStream extends from inputstream
               InputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream(xmlModel.getBytes());
               setDoc(parser.parse(is));
( Continued in 3 .... )
3. Then once the Document Object Model is ready, I try to serialize the object
using the LSSerializer API interface to convert the DOM Node to an XML string,
as below in the method implementation continued from above ..
( Continued from above here .... )
               //write the output to the specified String variable
               DOMImplementation impl = doc.getImplementation();
               DOMImplementationLS implLS = (DOMImplementationLS) impl.getFeature("LS","3.0");
               LSSerializer writer = implLS.createLSSerializer();
               writer.getDomConfig().setParameter("error-handler",new DOMErrorHandlerImpl());
               // This is to suppress the xml header, with version and the encoding being automatically generated
               writer.getDomConfig().setParameter("xml-declaration", false);
4. Assume the Node object got from the main DOM object is represented as "node"
and if we try
// Basically calling - LSSerializer.writeToString( Node node )
               String xmlSerialized = writer.writeToString(node);
System.out.println(xmlSerialized);
The output would look like this:
<Batch> <Request1> <Content>abc</Content> </Request1> <Request2> <Content>efg</Content> </Request2> </Batch>
Basically lost all the formatting.
Can someone suggest how to fix this ?
Thanks

Answer 1

I'm having the same problem. I think it's a bug with the LSSerialized. My code:
    Document doc = myElement.getOwnerDocument();
    ProcessingInstruction pi = doc.createProcessingInstruction(
        "xml-stylesheet",
        String.format(" type=\"%s\" href=\"%s\"", type, href));
    doc.insertBefore(pi,doc.getFirstChild());returns the following xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<windsor><queen favorite-dog="corgis"><name>Elizabeth</name><count>II</count></queen></windsor><?xml-stylesheet  type="text/xsl" href="mystylesheet.xsl"?>Interestingly, if I print out the nodes in order, using this code:
NodeList nl = doc.getChildNodes();
    for(int i = 0 ; i < nl.getLength() ; i++) {
      System.out.println("NODE: " + nl.item(i));
    }They are in the correct order:
NODE: [xml-stylesheet:  type="text/xsl" href="mystylesheet.xsl"]
NODE: [windsor: null]I think I'm going to have to switch to using the transform framework for output serialization. sigh