String representation of the xml document

Question

hi, I have created the following xml document using the DOM api. I want to the "function" to return a "string" - which represents the xml document i created. How do u do that?
As of now it doesnt return anything...
How do u return the entire xml document as character data..? just like
<root><elements>data</elements></root>....
anyhelp would be great.
import java.io.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
public class test1{
private static void function()throws IOException, DOMException{
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance ();
DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder ();
Document doc = db.newDocument ();
Element record = doc.createElement ("record");
Element name = doc.createElement ("name");
Element address = doc.createElement ("address");
Element zip = doc.createElement ("zip");
Text nameText = doc.createTextNode("bill");
Text addressText = doc.createTextNode("128, washington");
Text zipText = doc.createTextNode("10000");
doc.appendChild(record);
record.appendChild(name);
name.appendChild(nameText);
record.appendChild(address);
address.appendChild(addressText);
record.appendChild(zip);
zip.appendChild(zipText);
public static void main (String argv [])throws Exception {
function();
}

Answer 1

Brent,
Looks like you're using the Sun Java Parser. I'll show you how to do it with the Oracle XML Parser and you can extrapolate...
Document doc = new XMLDocument();
// Stuff here to build up the DOM Doc
// with elements, etc.
// Print the Document to a String
StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
// Wrap the stringwriter in a printwriter
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(sw);
// Print to the printwriter
((XMLDocument)doc).print(pw);
// return the string from the stringwriter
return sw.toString();