11

I am trying to build an XML document using a specific namespace. The final document I am trying to generate is supposed to look like this:

<m:documentObject xmlns:m="http://www.myschema.com">
    <sender>token</sender>
    <receiver>token</receiver>
    <payload>token</payload>
</m:documentObject>

Here is what i have so far. 

Document document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().newDocument();
Element requestElement = document.createElementNS("http://www.myschema.com", "documentObject");

document.appendChild(requestElement);

Element sender = document.createElement("sender");
requestElement.appendChild(sender);     
Text senderText = document.createTextNode("Xmlsender");
sender.appendChild(senderText); 

Element receiver = document.createElement("receiver");
requestElement.appendChild(receiver);       
Text receiverText = document.createTextNode("Xmlreceiver");
receiver.appendChild(receiverText); 

Element payload = document.createElement("payload");
requestElement.appendChild(payload);        
Text payloadText = document.createTextNode("Xmlpayload");
payload.appendChild(payloadText);   

StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
StreamResult result = new StreamResult(sw);

DOMSource source = new DOMSource(requestElement);

TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tf.newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "utf-8"); 
transformer.transform(source, result);

String xmlString = sw.toString();
System.out.println(xmlString)

For some reason when I run the above the schema comes out without the prefix. As shown below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<documentObject xmlns="http://www.myschema.com">
    <sender>Xmlsender</sender>
    <receiver>Xmlreceiver</receiver>
    <payload>Xmlpayload</payload>
</documentObject>

What do I need to do so that XML is exactly as shown in the first XML example with the namespace prefix and the tags to have the namespace prefix?

I am trying to create an XML string which will be used for a Spring-WS webservice which expects a JAXB object which is in the format shown in the first example.

Pieter VDE
  • 2,195
  • 4
  • 25
  • 44
ziggy
  • 15,677
  • 67
  • 194
  • 287
  • Please note that there are many different implementations of `javax.xml.transform.Transformer` interface that work different in this respect. From my own recent experience it turned out that org.apache.xalan.transformer.TransformerImpl would produce result similar to what you have. While using com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerImpl would produce result exactly as you expect (but will not use prefixes). – Andrew Haritonkin Jan 19 '15 at 11:14

1 Answers1

15

You can use setPrefix.

But it is better to create the root element like this:

document.createElementNS("http://www.myschema.com", "m:documentObject");

Note also that passing null to createElement is a supported way of forcing a null namespace. In your original example this would however not work because your document element effectively forces a default namespace by combining a namespace URI with no prefix.

Jirka Hanika
  • 13,301
  • 3
  • 46
  • 75
  • Fantastic answer; the same applies to using SuiteScript in Oracle's NetSuite - the modules appear to expose the same createElementNS(...) that work more or less the same way regarding namespace prefixing. The "prefix" attribute is documented as read-only and there is no corresponding setPrefix, so this was a real help. – Darren Ringer Mar 27 '18 at 19:01
  • Another example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11133754/adding-namespace-to-an-already-created-xml-document – rogerdpack Feb 22 '19 at 20:39