Using DOM to parse SOAP fault doesn't work properly

Question

why, when I run the following:
import java.io.IOException;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
public class ParseFaultDom {
public void operation(String uri) {
System.out.println("Parsing XML File: " + uri + "\n\n");
String faultCode = "";
String faultString = "";
try {
DocumentBuilderFactory factory =
DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document document = builder.parse(uri);
// should only be one apiece here
NodeList faultCodes = document.getElementsByTagName("faultcode");
NodeList faultStrings=document.getElementsByTagName("faultstring");
Node codeNode = faultCodes.item(0);
Node stringsNode = faultStrings.item(0);
faultCode = codeNode.getNodeValue();
faultString = stringsNode.getNodeValue();
System.out.println("code: " + faultCode);
System.out.println("string: " + faultString);
} catch(ParserConfigurationException e) {
System.out.println("Error creating parser: " + e.getMessage( ));
} catch(IOException e) {
System.out.println("Error reading URI: " + e.getMessage( ));
} catch (SAXException e) {
System.out.println("Error in parsing: " + e.getMessage( ));
public static void main(String[] args) {
if (args.length != 1) {
System.out.println("Usage: java ParseFault [XML URI]");
System.exit(0);
String uri = args[0];
ParseFaultDom pfd = new ParseFaultDom();
pfd.operation(uri);
giving it the following xml file as input:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/soap-envelope/"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema">
<s:Body>
<s:Fault>
<faultcode xsi:type="xsd:string">Client</faultcode>
<faultstring xsi:type="xsd:string">
Invalid value given for identifier field: "-1".
</faultstring>
<details>
<a>a</a>
<b>b</b>
<c>c</c>
</details>
</s:Fault>
</s:Body>
</s:Envelope>
do I get the following output:
Parsing XML File: fault.xml
code: null
string: null
In other words, it finds the tags I'm looking for, but it isn't getting the tag value, apparently.... I can add more instances of each tag, or delete them altogether, and the program raises the appropriate errors.... so it's is finding the tags inside the file, it just apparently doesn't pick up the value for some reason....
thanks anyone who can help... this should be simple, but it doesn't want to work for me... bad karma?

Answer 1

First of all, thanks a million for posting replies to my first two posts on these forums, you don't realize how much you have helped me. I feel bad for not assigning duke dollars so you could get them, so I owe you a few :)
Anyway, I see what was going on now, my thinking was at first that a Node consisted of a tag and it's value, and now I see that those are each a distinct Node element. So now I see that the enclosed text is itself a separate Node object, so I needed to get the child node of codeNode and then call getNodeValue on it to get the text I was looking for... ah, the life of a programmer...
anyway, thanks again!!!