How to avoid encoding of <,>,& with Document.createTextNode

Question

class XMLencode 
{
  public static void main(String[] args) 
  {
    try{

    DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    DocumentBuilder docBuilder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
    Document doc = docBuilder.newDocument();
    Element root = doc.createElement("roseindia");
       doc.appendChild(root);
    Text elmnt=doc.createTextNode("<data>sun</data><abcdefg/><end/>");
       root.appendChild(elmnt);
     TransformerFactory tranFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance(); 
    Transformer aTransformer = tranFactory.newTransformer(); 
    Source src = new DOMSource(doc); 
    Result dest = new StreamResult(System.out); 
    aTransformer.transform(src, dest); 

    }catch(Exception e){
     System.out.println(e.getMessage());
         }
     }
}

Here is my above piece of code. The output generated is like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?><roseindia>&lt;data&gt;sun&lt;/data&gt;&lt;abcdefg/&gt;&lt;end/&gt;</roseindia>

I dont want the tags to be encoded. I need the output in this fashion.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?><roseindia><data>sun</data><abcdefg/><end/></roseindia>

Please help me on this.

Thanks, Mohan

Answer 1

Short Answer

You could leverage the CDATA mechanism in XML to prevent characters from being escaped. Below is an example of the DOM code:

doc.createCDATASection("<foo/>");

The content will be:

<![CDATA[<foo/>]]>

---

LONG ANSWER

Below is a complete example of leveraging a CDATA section using the DOM APIs.

package forum12525152;

import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import javax.xml.transform.*;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import org.w3c.dom.*;

public class Demo {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document document = db.newDocument();

        Element rootElement = document.createElement("root");
        document.appendChild(rootElement);

        // Create Element with a Text Node
        Element fooElement = document.createElement("foo");
        fooElement.setTextContent("<foo/>");
        rootElement.appendChild(fooElement);

        // Create Element with a CDATA Section
        Element barElement = document.createElement("bar");
        CDATASection cdata = document.createCDATASection("<bar/>");
        barElement.appendChild(cdata);
        rootElement.appendChild(barElement);

        TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        Transformer t = tf.newTransformer();
        DOMSource source = new DOMSource(document);
        StreamResult result = new StreamResult(System.out);
        t.transform(source, result);
    }

}

Output

Note the difference in the foo and bar elements even though they have similar content. I have formatted the result of running the demo code to make it more readable:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<root>
    <foo>&lt;foo/&gt;</foo>
    <bar><![CDATA[<bar/>]]></bar>
</root>

Answer 2

Instead of writing like this doc.createTextNode("<data>sun</data><abcdefg/><end/>");

You should create each element.

import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import javax.xml.transform.*;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.*;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.*;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
class XMLencode {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {

            DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory
                    .newInstance();
            DocumentBuilder docBuilder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
            Document doc = docBuilder.newDocument();
            Element root = doc.createElement("roseindia");
            doc.appendChild(root);

            Element data = doc.createElement("data");
            root.appendChild(data);
            Text elemnt = doc.createTextNode("sun");
            data.appendChild(elemnt);
            Element data1 = doc.createElement("abcdefg");
            root.appendChild(data1);

            //Text elmnt = doc.createTextNode("<data>sun</data><abcdefg/><end/>");
            //root.appendChild(elmnt);

            TransformerFactory tranFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
            Transformer aTransformer = tranFactory.newTransformer();
            Source src = new DOMSource(doc);
            Result dest = new StreamResult(System.out);
            aTransformer.transform(src, dest);

        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }
    }
}