getChildNodes giving unexpected result

Question

My XML looks like this-

<collected_objects>
        <object flag="complete" id="objId" version="1">
          <variable_value variable_id="varId">ValueGoesHere</variable_value>
          <reference item_ref="2"/>
        </object>
        <object comment="objComment" flag="complete" id="objId" version="1">
          <reference item_ref="1"/>
        </object>
</collected_objects>

I am processing it using below code-

Document dom = parser.getDocument();
    NodeList collected_objects = dom.getElementsByTagName("object");
    System.out.println("Number of collected objects are " + collected_objects.getLength());

        for (int i = 0; i < collected_objects.getLength(); i++) {

            Node aNode = collected_objects.item(i);
            //get children of "objects"         
            NodeList refNodes = aNode.getChildNodes();

            System.out.println("# of chidren are " + refNodes.getLength());

            //print attributes of "objects"

            NamedNodeMap attributes = aNode.getAttributes();
            for (int a = 0; a < attributes.getLength(); a++) {
             Node theAttribute = attributes.item(a);
             System.out.println(theAttribute.getNodeName() + "=" + theAttribute.getNodeValue());

        }

}

it outputs as-

Number of collected objects are 2
# of chidren are 5
flag=complete
id=objId
version=1
# of chidren are 3
comment=objComment
flag=complete
id=objId
version=1

My question is why "# of chidren are" are 5 and 3 respectively? Shouldn't I be expecting 2 and 1 respectively ? because first object has "variable_value" and "reference" and second object has only "reference"

Essentially, my intent is to process children of "objects".

Answer 1

Make sure you don't have whitespaces between <object> node children. Whitespaces are considered childnodes and returned as such.

Testing if

childNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE

should be enough.