JDOM "IllegalStateException: Root element not set" when reading file

Question

Hello, I am relatively new to XML. I am trying to read an xml document to parse some information out of it. I basically have a large amount of data I want to load into my program. I could program it all in as static arrays, but I thought xml would be easier, and make changes easier.
I am trying to use JDOM, and have the project set up. My problem is when I read the document, it always gives a root element not set exception. Here is my xml file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
    Contents
</root>Very basic, I'm using this to get things started. Here is my code for reading it:
        SAXBuilder sb = new SAXBuilder();
        Document d = new Document();
        try {
            sb.build(new File("test1.xml"));
        catch (JDOMException jdome) {
            System.err.println(jdome);
        catch (IOException ioe) {
            System.err.println(ioe);
        d.getContent();Whenever I try to do anything with the contents of the Document, like d.getContent(), it always throws a java.lang.IllegalStateException: Root element not set. It reads the file successfully (as far as I can tell), but it's like the xml file is empty. I can't find anything on the web about this problem, and every tutorial says to do exactly what I've done, but never mention any possible problem. It can find the file, and I can write to an xml file as in other tutorials, but reading one in is a problem.
I chose JDOM because it seemed simplest for just reading in a large amount of data and parsing it out into variables. This is a very simple project, so I don't want to spend a lot of time writing xml parsing code, I'm only using xml because it will probably be easier than hard coding the data. Would a different xml api be easier to use for my purposes?
Message was edited by:
hunter9000

Answer 1

You must always give the browser an either an absolute URL from the top of
          the web server (not the
          web application) or a relative path from the current page.
          Sam
          "Vijay Kumar" <[email protected]> wrote in message
          news:[email protected]..
          > Hi
          >
          > I get the 'getResource is called when document root is not set.' error
          > when I access any files in the webapp with their absolute path.
          >
          > Environment: WIN/NT SP3, WL5.1 SP5 as the webserver and app server.
          >
          > My webapp located in d:\temp is deployed as foo
          > weblogic.httpd.webApp.foo=d:/temp
          >
          > For example:
          > I can access a file in d:\temp\secured\home.html using
          > test
          >
          > However if with in an html I try to access the file using the abs path
          > from doc root
          > test I get an error
          >
          > and I guess the default servlet looks for the servlet-context named
          > 'secured'
          >
          > Can someone tell me if I can set the documentRoot in the web.xml or
          > weblogic.xml
          > file OR if there is any other way to access to the file using the abs path
          > of /secured/test/test.html
          >
          >
          > Thanks in advance
          >
          > Vijay
          >
          >
          >
          >