how do I extract text from a nested xml using xmlpullparser in android?

butelo picture butelo · Feb 27, 2012 · Viewed 8.2k times · Source
<doc>
 <element>
  text
     <item>
     text1
     </item>
     <item>
     text2
     </item>
  text3
 </element>
 <element>
  another text
 </element>


 ...
</doc>

And I want to extract text to an string like this:

 "text text1 text2 text3"

"item" tags are nested inside "element"

Im using xmlpullparser in Android but I could use any other parser if it make things easier. tx.

Answer

jsmith picture jsmith · Feb 27, 2012

I parse similar xml files. Here is an example. You'll need to add error checking as appropriate.

void loadXML(XmlPullParser xpp) {
    int eventType = xpp.next();
    while (eventType != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT) {
        if (eventType == XmlPullParser.START_TAG && 0 == XML_ELEMENT_TAG.compareTo(xpp.getName())) {
            loadElement(xpp);
        }

        eventType = xpp.next();   
    }
}

private void loadElement(XmlPullParser xpp) {

    int eventType = xpp.getEventType();
    if ( eventType == XmlPullParser.START_TAG && 0 == XML_ELEMENT_TAG.compareTo(xpp.getName()) ) {
        eventType = xpp.next();
        while ( eventType != XmlPullParser.END_TAG || 0 != XML_ELEMENT_TAG.compareTo(xpp.getName()) ) {
            if (eventType == XmlPullParser.START_TAG &&     0 == XML_ITEM_TAG.compareTo(xpp.getName())) {
                loadItem(xpp);
            }

            eventType = xpp.next();   
        }
    } 
}

private void loadItem(XmlPullParser xpp) {

    int eventType = xpp.getEventType();
    if ( eventType == XmlPullParser.START_TAG && 0 == XML_ITEM_TAG.compareTo(xpp.getName()) ) {

        eventType = xpp.next();
        while ( eventType != XmlPullParser.END_TAG || 0 != XML_ITEM_TAG.compareTo(xpp.getName()) ) {

            // Get attributes.
            String  attr = xpp.getAttributeValue(null, XML_MY_ATTR); 
            String  text = null;

            // Get item text if present.
            eventType = xpp.next();
            while ( eventType != XmlPullParser.END_TAG || 0 != XML_ITEM_TAG.compareTo(xpp.getName()) ) {
                if ( eventType == XmlPullParser.TEXT ) {
                    text = xpp.getText();
                } 

                eventType = xpp.next();
            }

            eventType = xpp.next();   
        }
    } 
}