Newbie: Traversing XML with Java

Question

i have an xml file named contactlist.xml. The DTD is as follows:
<!DOCTYPE contactlist [
<!ELEMENT contactlist     (contact+)>
<!ELEMENT contact     (name,tel,email)>
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT tel (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT email (#PCDATA)>
]>
It is a well formed document. Now what i need to do is to use java to traverse this document when given a name to return the coresponding telephone number and email address. I have created a java file named TraverseContacts.java using DOM. I have been able to get access of the file contactlist.xml (document = builder.parse(new File("contactlist.xml"))) but i am being unable to traverse it! Here is an extract of the code which traverses the document:
switch(node.getNodeType()){
               //if its not a Document node, process its children
               case Node.DOCUMENT_NODE:
                    Document doc= (Document) node;
                    getResult(doc.getDocumentElement());
                    break;
               //process element node acording to its tag name
               case Node.ELEMENT_NODE:
                    if(node.getNodeName().equals("contactlist"))
                         processChildNodes(node.getChildNodes());
                    else if(node.getNodeName().equals("contact"))
                         processChildNodes(node.getChildNodes());
                    else if(node.getNodeName().equals("name"))
                         //find the attribute value for name
                         //check whether it matches the query
                         NamedNodeMap nameAttributes=node.getAttributes();
                         Node value = nameAttributes.item(0);
                         if((value.getNodeValue()).equalsIgnoreCase(name)){
                              if(node.getNodeName().equals("tel"))
                                   Element telElement = (Element) node;
                                   tel_no += telElement.getAttribute("tel");
                                   result += tel_no;
                              if(node.getNodeName().equals("email"))
                                   Element emailElement = (Element) node;
                                   e_mail += emailElement.getAttribute("email");
                                   result += e_mail;
                         else return;
                    else if(node.getNodeName().equals("tel")){
                         Element telElement = (Element) node;
                         tel_no += telElement.getAttribute("tel");
                         result += tel_no;
                    else if(node.getNodeName().equals("email")){
                         Element emailElement = (Element) node;
                         e_mail += emailElement.getAttribute("email");
                         result += e_mail;
                    break;
can somebody please tell me where have i gone wrong. i am sure the mistake is somewhere around here in this java code only but am unable to identify it.

Answer 1

Your DTD indicates that you have (for eaxample) an email element with text in it but no attributes, but you are using emailElement.getAttribute("email"). You need to get the string value of the text node(s) within emailElement, not the attribute value.
Pete