Delete a node and its elements from an XML file in java

Question

i have the following xml :

<table1>
    <row0>
        <column1>String</column1>
        <column2>int</column2>
    </row0>

    <row1>
        <column1>aa</column1>
        <column2>65432</column2>
    </row1>

    <row2>
        <column1>ww</column1>
        <column2>1111</column2>
    </row2>

    <row3>
        <column1>fff</column1>
        <column2>333</column2>
    </row3>

    <row4>
        <column1>jj</column1>
        <column2>2</column2>
    </row4>
</table1>

and i want to delete the node row3 and its elements. I am writing that XML file in java.how to do that? i saw this code in another post but couldn't understand it

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    Document document = dbf.newDocumentBuilder().parse(new File("input.xml"));

    XPathFactory xpf = XPathFactory.newInstance();
    XPath xpath = xpf.newXPath();
    XPathExpression expression = xpath.compile("//A/B[C/E/text()=13]");

    Node b13Node = (Node) expression.evaluate(document, XPathConstants.NODE);
    b13Node.getParentNode().removeChild(b13Node);

    TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
    Transformer t = tf.newTransformer();
    t.transform(new DOMSource(document), new StreamResult(System.out));
}

You could use [DOM](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jaxp/dom/readingXML.html) for iterating through and altering the nodes! — ParkerHalo, Nov 17 '15 at 14:30
Possible duplicate of [Remove XML Node using java parser](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3717215/remove-xml-node-using-java-parser) — dguay, Nov 17 '15 at 14:31
So, if you didn't understand the code, did you read about XPath? Did you try to look up the documentation of the various classes used in that code? — RealSkeptic, Nov 17 '15 at 14:40

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 17 '15 at 14:45

This code snippet should do what you want to. If you just want to remove the row3 element from your tree you don't have to use (and understand) the overmighty XPATH!

// -------------- building the document out of the file  -----------------
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
Document document = dbf.newDocumentBuilder().parse(new File("input.xml"));
//------------------------------------------------------------------------

// -------------- finding the right node and removing it -----------------
Element table = document.getDocumentElement();
Node row3 = table.getElementsByTagName("row3").item(0);
table.removeChild(row3);
//------------------------------------------------------------------------

// -------------- printing the resulting tree to the console -------------
TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer t = tf.newTransformer();
t.transform(new DOMSource(document), new StreamResult(System.out));
//------------------------------------------------------------------------

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 07 '23 at 06:26

This code will remove multiple nodes at a time and multiple occurrences of the selected node.

for (String nodeToBeRemoved : nodesToBeRemoved) {
    NodeList allNodeList = doc.getElementsByTagName(nodeToBeRemoved);
    removeSelectedNode(allNodeList);
  }

  private static void removeSelectedNode(NodeList allNodeList) {
allNodeList.item(0).getParentNode().removeChild(allNodeList.item(0));
if(allNodeList.getLength()>0)
  removeSelectedNode(allNodeList);
}

Delete a node and its elements from an XML file in java

2 Answers2

Linked