Parsing XML in a Custom Class Problem

Question

Hi, I am trying to parse an XML file from a class within my web app. It isn't a servlet, just a custom class to parse the xml.
However, I keep getting a null document printed when I try to print the document to the log file. This is the class:public class XMLParser
     Document document;
     public XMLParser()
          DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
          factory.setValidating(true);
          factory.setNamespaceAware(true);
          try
               DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
               document = builder.parse(new File("SiteDescriptor.xml"));
          catch(SAXException sxe)
               // Error generated during parsing
               Exception x = sxe;
               if(sxe.getException() != null)
                    x = sxe.getException();
               x.printStackTrace();
          catch(ParserConfigurationException pce)
               pce.printStackTrace();
          catch(IOException ioe)
               ioe.printStackTrace();
          System.out.println("\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"+document+"\n\n\n\n\n");
}I know this code works as I use the exactly the same code in another application with the same XML file.
This is the XML file:
<root host="http://localhost:8080">
     <branch name="Home Page" shortname="/" type="Home Page" instanceid="44987" typeid="1227">
          <branch name="Films Archive" shortname="/films" type="Branch" instanceid="96354" typeid="1778">
               <leaf name="Evil Dead" shortname="/films/evil_dead" type="Films" instanceid="58985" typeid="1147"/>
               <leaf name="1984" shortname="/films/1984" type="Films" instanceid="49741" typeid="1147" />
          </branch>
     </branch
</root>And this is what I get when i print the document to the log file:
[#document: null]
Does anyone know why I cant get the class to read the document? I'm not getting any file not found exceptions or any other errors in the log.
Cheers,
Paul

Answer 1

Hi duffymo, I have tried as you suggested. I created a ServletContextListener implementation and in my web.xml file I have defined the XML file as a <context-param> and I have also defined the listener.
The ServletContextListener implementation creates the XML file as a resource using getResourceAsStream() and passes the InputStream to my parser. However, the parser still doesn't seem to work and prints out a null document in the log file: [#document: null]. Any ideas??
The web.xml file:
           <context-param>
          <param-name>siteDescriptor</param-name>     
          <param-value>/WEB-INF/SiteDescriptor.xml</param-value>
     </context-param>
          <listener>
          <listener-class>cms.beans.InitializeXML</listener-class>
     </listener>
......and the ServletContextListener is:
public class InitializeXML implements ServletContextListener
     static InputStream in = null;
     public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent sce)
          ServletContext context = sce.getServletContext();
          String siteDescriptor = context.getInitParameter("siteDescriptor");
          try
               in = context.getResourceAsStream(siteDescriptor);
          catch(Exception e)
               context.log("Error creating xml resource: " + e);
     public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent sce)
     public static InputStream getXMLResource()
          return in;
}Thanks,
Paul