DOMDocument getNodeValue() returns null (contains an output escaped string)

Question

I am processing a DomDocument which is basically the XML result of a SOAP web service. To give you an idea, this is what it looks like

...<ParentNode><ChildNode>&lt;output&gt;&lt;escaped&lt;string</ChildNode></ParentNode>...

Yes, the value of ChildNode is a string that has been output escaped and is XML that is packed within this XML. I do the usual run of DomDocument processing such as

NodeList rows = dom.getElementsByTagName(ChildNode);
for(int i=0;i<rows.length;i++)
{
  System.out.println(rows[i].getParentNode()); // returns ParentNode
  System.out.println(rows[i].getNodeName()); // returns ChildNode
  System.out.println(rows[i].getNodeValue()); // returns null
}

After you inspect the above code, you realize that even though the node returns correct values for ParentNode and the NodeName node, it returns a null value upon accessing getNodeValue(). There is a string here, and I can see it in my console output. But I am not sure what trick I am missing here, does the output escaping mess it up in any particular way?

Thanks, Parijat

Answer 1

You want getTextContent() rather than getNodeValue() - the latter always returns null for element nodes.

Answer 2

Instead of

rows[i].getNodeValue()

use

rows[i].getNodeValue().getChildNodes().item(0).getNodeValue()