How to work around the java runtime bug -The indentation is overridden

Question

Hello all,
I generate xml from a servlet and stream to client as the following code. It works fine in my local machine (The xml is indented nicely) but when the war file deployed on a geronimo server 2.0.2. (It uses java 1.5.0_16). The xml streamed out without indentation
               response.setContentType("application/xml");
               response.setHeader("Content-disposition","attachment; filename="+fileName);
               // set up a transformer
               TransformerFactory transfac = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
               Transformer trans = transfac.newTransformer();
               trans.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.METHOD, "xml");                
               trans.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "UTF-8");
               trans.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.STANDALONE, "yes");
               trans.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.VERSION, "1.0");
               trans.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
               trans.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "4");
               // create string from xml tree
               DOMSource source = new DOMSource(doc);
               ServletOutputStream os = response.getOutputStream();
               OutputStreamWriter w = new OutputStreamWriter(os, "UTF-8");
               StreamResult result = new StreamResult();          
               result.setWriter(w);
               trans.transform(source, result);This is the bug: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6337981 (The indentation is overridden)
I tried the work around suggested there by using OutputStreamWriter, it doesn't help.
(I cannot change anything on the server. I have to accept whatever in the server)
Please help
Thank you
Edited by: mycoffee on Jun 10, 2011 8:16 AM

Answer 1

You have to set the indent level on the factory, see bug #6296446. This only affects 1.5; 1.6 allows you to set the indent level on the transformer, as you did (and for cross-version compatibility, setting it on both doesn't hurt).
transfac.setAttribute("indent-number", Integer.valueOf(4));