Returning Text Nodes

Question

Hi,
Can somebody please help me with this problem. I am trying to return a specific node name, return it, and see if it has any child nodes. Below is a snippet from my XML doc:
<description>
     <genre>football simulation</genre>
     <year>2004</year>
     <publisher ....However, when I enter "year", I am presented with
<year>2004</year>as the child nodes of the "year" node. And when print the results from
getNodeType, the text nodes arent identified. How can I get my code to see if there are text nodes present and return the text nodes?? I'll be extrmely grateful for any help!! Thanks.
Below is some of my Java code:
  NodeList docNodes = test.getElementsByTagName("year");
      if(docNodes.getLength() !=0){
           System.out.println("noelist length: "+docNodes.getLength());
           for (int i=0; i<docNodes.getLength();i++){
                Node blah = docNodes.item(i);
                System.out.println(blah);
                   System.out.println(blah.getNodeType());
                if(blah.hasChildNodes()){
                     System.out.println("child nodes present: "+blah.getChildNodes());
                     Node check = (Node) blah.getChildNodes();
                     System.out.println("node type: "+check.getNodeType());
                     if (check.getNodeType()==Node.TEXT_NODE){
                          System.out.println("text nodes present");
                     else{
                          System.out.println("text nodes ARENT present");
                     }

Answer 1

Here is a little helper class I use when parsing DOM via Xerces. May not work equally well for jDOM or other implementations.
final public class XmlHelper extends Object {
     // Class Variables //
     /** TODO Consider moving this to an interface with constants */
     static final public String XML_TAG_ROOT = "document";
     // Constructors //
      * Default constructor.
     public XmlHelper() {
          super();
     // Static Methods //
     static public Document newDocument()
          throws ConfigurationException {
          try {
               DocumentBuilder builder = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder();
               return builder.newDocument();
          catch (ParserConfigurationException configure) {
               throw new ConfigurationException("Error instantiating DOM XML parser", configure);
     static public Document parse(InputStream in)
          throws ConfigurationException, IOException, ParseException {
          try {
               DocumentBuilder builder = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder();
               return builder.parse(in);
          catch (ParserConfigurationException configure) {
               throw new ConfigurationException("Error instantiating DOM XML parser", configure);
          catch (SAXException parse) {
               throw new ParseException("Error SAX parsing XML input stream", parse);
     static public Document parse(String uri)
          throws ConfigurationException, IOException, ParseException {
          try {
               DocumentBuilder builder = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder();
               return builder.parse(uri);
          catch (ParserConfigurationException configure) {
               throw new ConfigurationException("Error instantiating DOM XML parser", configure);
          catch (SAXException parse) {
               throw new ParseException("Error SAX parsing XML uri '" + uri + "'", parse);
     static public String serialize(Document target)
          throws IOException, ConfigurationException, TransformationException {
          ByteArrayOutputStream byteOut = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
          serialize(target, byteOut, true);
          return byteOut.toString();
     static public void serialize(Document document, OutputStream target)
          throws IOException, ConfigurationException, TransformationException {
          serialize(document, target, false);          
     static public void serialize(Document document, OutputStream target, boolean indent)
          throws IOException, ConfigurationException, TransformationException {
          try {
               Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
               if (indent)
                    transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
               transformer.transform(new DOMSource(document), new StreamResult(target));
          catch (TransformerConfigurationException configure) {
               throw new ConfigurationException("Error instantiating XML transformer", configure);
          catch (TransformerException transform) {
               /** @todo Need to write a generic transformation or serialization exception */
               throw new TransformationException("Error transforming XML", transform);
     static public Element getChildElement(Element parent, String name) {
          Element child = null;
          if (parent != null) {
               NodeList childNodes = parent.getElementsByTagName(name);
               switch (childNodes.getLength()) {
                    case 0:
                         System.err.println("XML element <" + parent.getNodeName() + ">" +
                              " has zero child nodes <" + name + "> (expecting one node)");
                    case 1:
                         child = (Element) childNodes.item(0);
                         break;
                    default:
                         child = (Element) childNodes.item(0);
                         /** @todo Consider implementing a "Warning Log" for errors such as these rather than sys.err */
                         System.err.println("XML element <" + parent.getNodeName() + ">" +
                              " has " + childNodes.getLength() + " child nodes <" + name + "> (expecting only one)");
          return child;
     static public List getAllChildElements(Element parent, String name) {
          List elements = null;
          if (parent != null) {
               elements = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList());
               NodeList childNodes = parent.getChildNodes();
               for (int current = 0; current < childNodes.getLength(); current++) {
                    Node node = childNodes.item(current);
                    if ((node instanceof Element) && node.getNodeName().equals(name)) {
                         elements.add(node);
          return elements;
     static public String getChildElementValue(Element parent, String childName) {
          Element child = getChildElement(parent, childName);
          return child == null ? null : getElementValue(child);
     static public String getElementValue(Element parent) {
          NodeList nodes = parent.getChildNodes();
          int current = 0;
          int length = nodes.getLength();
          while (current < length) {
               Node node = nodes.item(current);
               if (node instanceof Text) {
                    String value = node.getNodeValue();
                    if (value != null)
                         return value.trim();
               current++;
          return "";
}- Saish