SAX callback not updating global stringbuffer

Question

Need help figuring out why my stringbuffer is empty after updating it in a overwritten SAX callback method. My code:

public class SAXXMLParser extends DefaultHandler
{
    SAXParserFactory factory;
SAXXMLParser dh;
SAXParser sax;
StringBuffer accumulator;
String remember = "";

public String saxParse( String msgToParse, String uriPathExpression )
        throws SAXException, IOException, ParserConfigurationException 
{
    System.out.println( "saxParse" );

    factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
    sax = factory.newSAXParser();
    dh = new SAXXMLParser();
    InputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream( msgToParse.getBytes() );
    sax.parse( is , dh );

    System.err.println( remember );
    return remember;
}

public void startElement( String uri, String localName, String elementName,           Attributes attrs )
{
    accumulator.setLength(0);
}

public void endElement( String uri, String name, String qName )
{
    System.out.println( qName );
    if( qName.equalsIgnoreCase( "my element" ) )
    {
        remember = accumulator.toString();
    }
}

public void characters( char[] ch, int start, int len )
{
    accumulator.append( ch, start, len );
}

public void startDocument()
{
    accumulator = new StringBuffer();
}
}

In another class, I call SAXXMLParser.saxParse( string, string ) expecting a string to be returned (remember) but remember is always null.

Answer 1

You need to return dh.remember instead of remember

or

call sax.parse( is , this ); instead of sax.parse( is , dh );