XML and Dom4J. How to retrieve values with the iterator?

I'm iterating through all the data at this webpage (sample xml below) and I'm confused as to exactly how to get the required values.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet title="XSL_formatting" type="text/xsl" href="/i/xml/xsl_formatting_rss.xml"?>
<rss xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule" version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title>Ariana Resources News</title>
        <link>http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/detail?code=cotn:AAU.L&amp;display=news</link>
        <description />
    <item>
        <title>Ariana Resources PLC - Environmental Impact Assessment Submitted for Kiziltepe</title>
        <link>http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/detail?code=cotn:AAU.L&amp;display=news&amp;action=article&amp;articleid=9084833&amp;from=rss</link>
        <description>Some Article information</description>
        <pubDate>Fri, 30 Aug 2013 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
        <title>Ariana Resources PLC - Directors' Dealings and Holding in Company</title>
        <link>http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/detail?code=cotn:AAU.L&amp;display=news&amp;action=article&amp;articleid=9053338&amp;from=rss</link>
        <description>Some Article information</description>
        <pubDate>Wed, 31 Jul 2013 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
        <title>Ariana Resources PLC - Directorship Changes</title>
        <link>http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/detail?code=cotn:AAU.L&amp;display=news&amp;action=article&amp;articleid=9046582&amp;from=rss</link>
        <description>Some Article information</description>
        <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jul 2013 09:31:00 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
        <title>Ariana Resources PLC - Ariana Resources plc : Capital Reorganisation</title>
        <link>http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/detail?code=cotn:AAU.L&amp;display=news&amp;action=article&amp;articleid=9038706&amp;from=rss</link>
        <description>Some Article information</description>
        <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jul 2013 09:31:00 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
</channel>
</rss>

I've had a look at the dom4j quickstart guide, although I suspect I'm just not quite getting it.

How can I iterate in such a fashion that I:

Go through each if it has todays date and...
Get the values of each specificall , and

At this point I've got the below, and I think it's very wrong on the second loop... any help is hugely appreciated:

    //Create a null Document Object
    Document theXML = null;

    //Get the document of the XML and assign to Document object
    theXML = parseXML(url);

    //Place the root element of theXML into a variable
    Element root = theXML.getRootElement();


    // iterate through child elements of root
    for ( Iterator i = root.elementIterator(); i.hasNext(); ) {
        Element element = (Element) i.next();
        // do something

        // iterate through child elements of root with element name "item"
        for ( Iterator j = root.elementIterator( "item" ); j.hasNext(); ) {
            Element foo = (Element) j.next();

            String rnsHeadline = "";
            String rnsLink = "";
            String rnsFullText = "";
            String rnsConstituentName = "";



            Rns rns = new Rns(null, null, null, null);

        }

Solution

With XPath functionality of dom4j:

// Place the root element of theXML into a variable
List<? extends Node> items =
        (List<? extends Node>)theXML.selectNodes("//rss/channel/item");

// RFC-dictated date format used with RSS
DateFormat dateFormatterRssPubDate =
        new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z", Locale.ENGLISH);

// today started at this time
DateTime timeTodayStartedAt = new DateTime().withTimeAtStartOfDay();

for (Node node: items) {
     String pubDate = node.valueOf( "pubDate" );
     DateTime date = new DateTime(dateFormatterRssPubDate.parse(pubDate));
     if (date.isAfter(timeTodayStartedAt)) {
         // it's today, do something!
         System.out.println("Today: " + date);
     } else {
         System.out.println("Not today: " + date);
     }
}

Dom4j needs jaxen dependency for XPath to work. I used JodaTime to compare the dates, as it's a lot cleaner than using java builtin dates. Here's the full example.

Note that dom4j is not really maintained, so you might be also interested in this discussion about dom4j alternatives.