java - XML parse file from HTTP

Question

I have an XML file located at a location such as

http://example.com/test.xml

I'm trying to parse the XML file to use it in my program with xPath like this but it is not working.

Document doc = builder.parse(new File(url));

How can I get the XML file?

Answer 1

Try using URLConnection.getInputStream() for getting the handle of XML file.

See the below code, in that I am trying to open an xml file and printing all the description fields:

import java.io.InputStream;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;

import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;

public class HTTPXMLTest
{
    public static void main(String[] args) 
    {
        try {
            new HTTPXMLTest().start();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    private void start() throws Exception
    {
        URL url = new URL("http://localhost:8080/AutoLogin/resource/web.xml");
        URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();

        Document doc = parseXML(connection.getInputStream());
        NodeList descNodes = doc.getElementsByTagName("description");

        for(int i=0; i<descNodes.getLength();i++)
        {
            System.out.println(descNodes.item(i).getTextContent());
        }
    }

    private Document parseXML(InputStream stream)
    throws Exception
    {
        DocumentBuilderFactory objDocumentBuilderFactory = null;
        DocumentBuilder objDocumentBuilder = null;
        Document doc = null;
        try
        {
            objDocumentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
            objDocumentBuilder = objDocumentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();

            doc = objDocumentBuilder.parse(stream);
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            throw ex;
        }       

        return doc;
    }
}