How to deal with empty tags in a SAX Parser

Question

Hi,
I hope someone can help me with the problem I am having!
Basically, I have written an xml-editor application. When an XML file is selected, I parse the file with a SAX parser and save the start and end locations of all the tags and character data. This enables me to display the xml file with the tags all nicely formatted with pretty colours. Truly it is a Joy To Behold. However, I have a problem with tags in this form:
<package name="boo"/>
because the SAX parser treats them like this:
<package name = boo>
</package>
for various complex reasons the latter is unaccetable so my question is: Is there some fiendishly clever method to detect tags of this type as they occur, so that I can treat them accordingly?
Thanks,
Chris

Answer 1

I have spent some time on googling for code doing this, but found nothing better, than I had to write in by myself.
So, it would be something like this. Enjoy :)
package comd;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
import java.util.Stack;
import java.util.Enumeration;
public class EmptyTagsHandler extends DefaultHandler {
     private StringBuilder xmlBuilder;
     private Stack<XmlElement> elementStack;
     private String processedXml;
     private class XmlElement{
          private String name;
          private boolean isEmpty = true;
          public XmlElement(String name) {
               this.name = name;
          public void setNotEmpty(){
               isEmpty = false;
     public EmptyTagsHandler(){
          xmlBuilder = new StringBuilder();
          elementStack = new Stack();
     private String getElementXPath(){
          StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
          for (Enumeration en=elementStack.elements();en.hasMoreElements();){
               builder.append(en.nextElement());
               builder.append("/");
          return builder.toString();
     public String getXml(){
          return processedXml;
     public void startDocument() throws SAXException {
          xmlBuilder = new StringBuilder();
          elementStack.clear();
          processedXml = null;
     public void endDocument() throws SAXException {
          processedXml = xmlBuilder.toString();
     public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes attributes) throws SAXException {
          if (!elementStack.empty()) {
               XmlElement elem = elementStack.peek();
               elem.setNotEmpty();
          xmlBuilder.append("<");
          xmlBuilder.append(qName);
          for (int i=0; i<attributes.getLength();i++){
               xmlBuilder.append(" ");
               xmlBuilder.append(attributes.getQName(i));
               xmlBuilder.append("=");
               xmlBuilder.append(attributes.getValue(i));
          xmlBuilder.append(">");
          elementStack.push(new XmlElement(qName));
     public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName) throws SAXException {
          XmlElement elem = elementStack.peek();
          if (elem.isEmpty) {
               xmlBuilder.insert(xmlBuilder.length()-1, "/");
          } else {
               xmlBuilder.append("</");
               xmlBuilder.append(qName);
               xmlBuilder.append(">");
          elementStack.pop();
     public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length) throws SAXException {
          if (!elementStack.empty()) {
               XmlElement elem = elementStack.peek();
               elem.setNotEmpty();
          String str = new String(ch, start, length);
          xmlBuilder.append(str);
     public void ignorableWhitespace(char ch[], int start, int length) throws SAXException {
          String str = new String(ch, start, length);
          xmlBuilder.append(str);
}