Skipping nodes with sax

Question

Is it possible to skip nodes when parsing and how, does this skippedEntity have anything to do with it?

Consider this XML :

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<nutrition>

<daily-values>
    <total-fat units="g">65</total-fat>
    <saturated-fat units="g">20</saturated-fat>
    <cholesterol units="mg">300</cholesterol>
    <sodium units="mg">2400</sodium>
    <carb units="g">300</carb>
    <fiber units="g">25</fiber>
    <protein units="g">50</protein>
</daily-values>

</nutrition>

I want to skip "sodium" element

Answer 1

You could do something like the following:

import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
import org.xml.sax.XMLReader;

public class Demo {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        SAXParserFactory spf = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
        SAXParser sp = spf.newSAXParser();
        XMLReader xr = sp.getXMLReader();
        xr.setContentHandler(new MyContentHandler(xr));
        xr.parse("input.xml");
    }
}

MyContentHandler

This class is responsible for processing your XML document. When you hit a node you want to ignore you can swap in the IgnoringContentHandler which will swallow all events for that node.

import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.XMLReader;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;

public class MyContentHandler extends DefaultHandler {

    private XMLReader xmlReader;

    public MyContentHandler(XMLReader xmlReader) {
        this.xmlReader = xmlReader;
    }

    public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName,
            Attributes atts) throws SAXException {
        if ("sodium".equals(qName)) {
            xmlReader.setContentHandler(new IgnoringContentHandler(xmlReader,
                    this));
        } else {
            System.out.println("START " + qName);
        }
    }

    public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName)
            throws SAXException {
        System.out.println("END " + qName);
    }

    public void characters(char[] ch, int start, int length)
            throws SAXException {
        System.out.println(new String(ch, start, length));
    }

}

IgnoringContentHandler

When the IgnoringContentHandler is done swallowing events it passes control back to your main ContentHandler.

import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
import org.xml.sax.ContentHandler;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.XMLReader;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;

public class IgnoringContentHandler extends DefaultHandler {

    private int depth = 1;
    private XMLReader xmlReader;
    private ContentHandler contentHandler;

    public IgnoringContentHandler(XMLReader xmlReader, ContentHandler contentHandler) {
        this.contentHandler = contentHandler;
        this.xmlReader = xmlReader;
    }

    public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName,
            Attributes atts) throws SAXException {
        depth++;
    }

    public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName)
            throws SAXException {
        depth--;
        if(0 == depth) {
           xmlReader.setContentHandler(contentHandler);
        }
    }

}