DOM to String

Question

Hi,
I want to transform a xml document (org.w3c.dom.Document) into a String. I use Trax to do it, but it doesn?t work very well. The method I use for the transformation is the folowing one:
public String toString()
try
TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer();
DOMSource source = new DOMSource(mDocument);
StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
StreamResult result = new StreamResult(sw);
transformer.transform(source, result);
return sw.toString();
catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println("Error in method toString: "+e.getMessage());
return null;
When I use this method to transform, for example, the next document:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8">
<Message><C&oacute;digo>3</C&oacute;digo></Message>
I get the next String:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8">
<Message><C&#number;digo>3</C#&number;digo></Message>
| |
| |
243 243
when I would like to get a String like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8">
<Message><C�digo>3</C�digo></Message>
What I'm doing bad?

Answer 1

I think so. I'm going to explain you what the 'program' (sorry, yesterday I wrote 'application' instead of 'program') do exactly.
1) There is an applet which write a XML operation message that is sended to a servlet. For example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Message><C&oacute;digo>2</C&oacute;digo></Message>
2) The servlet recives the message, and get 'C&oacute;digo' which is used to write a database query.
3) Once the servlet gets the results of the query, the servlet writes another XML message with the results of the query, and send it to the applet.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Message><C&oacute;digo>2</C&oacute;digo><Result>...</Result></Message>
4) The applet receives the XML response message, and transformate it into a String, but the string is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Message><C&#243;digo>2</C&#243;digo><Result>...</Result></Message>
If I use the next code with the message received by the applet, I get 'c&oacute;digo':
Node vMessageNode = mDocument.getDocumentElement();
Node vCodeNode = vMessageNode.getFirstChild();
String vCode = vMessageNode.getNodeName();
But if I use the method toString (I wrote it yesterday) to convert the whole message into a string, the string contains "&#243;", when I'd like that it had "&oacute".
What is very strange is that if I use the method toString in the servlet, I obtain the right string (with "&oacute"), while if I use the method toString in the applet, I obtain the wrong string (with"&#243;")
I'm starting to think that perhaps the problem is in the methods I use to send and receive the xml message:
public void send (OutputStream out)
try
TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer();
DOMSource source = new DOMSource(m_documento);
StreamResult result = new StreamResult (out);
transformer.transform (source, result);
catch (Exception e)
System.out.println("Error in method send: " + e.getMessage());
public Node receive (InputStream in)
try
TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer();
StreamSource source = new StreamSource(in);
DocumentBuilderFactory dfactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder docBuilder = dfactory.newDocumentBuilder();
mDocument = docBuilder.newDocument();
transformer.transform(source, new DOMResult (m_documento));
catch (Exception e)
System.out.println("Error in method receive: " + e.getMessage));
return null;
return mDocument;
What do you think? Thank you very much.