How to get childnodes using DOM in Java

Question

I have this XML.

 <employees>
  <employee tag="FT" name="a">
     <password tag="1"/>
     <password tag="2"/>
</employee>
<employee tag="PT" name="b">
     <password tag="3"/>
     <password tag="4"/>
</employee>
</employees>

I am trying to get the child nodes of each employee and put the tag value of child nodes i.e. password's tag value in a list.

nl = doc.getElementsByTagName("employee");

for(int i=0;i<nl.getLength();i++){
 NamedNodeMap nnm = nl.item(i).getAttributes(); 
 NodeList children = nl.item(i).getChildNodes();
 passwordList = new ArrayList<String>();
 for(int j=0; j<children.getLength();j++){
   NamedNodeMap n = children.item(j).getAttributes();
   passwordTagAttr=(Attr) n.getNamedItem("tag");
   passwordTag=stopTagAttr.getValue();  
   passwordList.add(passwordTag);                   
   }
}

I am getting value of children =4 when I debug. But I should be getting it 2 for each loop Please help.

Answer 1

the NodeList returned by getChildNodes() contains Element child nodes (which is what you care about in this case) as well as attribute child nodes of the Node itself (which you don't).

for(int j=0; j<children.getLength();j++) {
   if (children.item(j) instanceof Element == false)
       continue;

   NamedNodeMap n = children.item(j).getAttributes();
   passwordTagAttr=(Attr) n.getNamedItem("tag");
   passwordTag=stopTagAttr.getValue();  
   passwordList.add(passwordTag);                   
}