How do I append a node to an existing XML file in java

Solution 1:

The following complete example will read an existing server.xml file from the current directory, append a new Server and re-write the file to server.xml. It does not work without an existing .xml file, so you will need to modify the code to handle that case.

import java.util.*;
import javax.xml.transform.*;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.*;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.*;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;

public class AddXmlNode {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = documentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document document = documentBuilder.parse("server.xml");
        Element root = document.getDocumentElement();

        Collection<Server> servers = new ArrayList<Server>();
        servers.add(new Server());

        for (Server server : servers) {
            // server elements
            Element newServer = document.createElement("server");

            Element name = document.createElement("name");
            name.appendChild(document.createTextNode(server.getName()));
            newServer.appendChild(name);

            Element port = document.createElement("port");
            port.appendChild(document.createTextNode(Integer.toString(server.getPort())));
            newServer.appendChild(port);

            root.appendChild(newServer);
        }

        DOMSource source = new DOMSource(document);

        TransformerFactory transformerFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();
        StreamResult result = new StreamResult("server.xml");
        transformer.transform(source, result);
    }

    public static class Server {
        public String getName() { return "foo"; }
        public Integer getPort() { return 12345; }
    }
}

Example server.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<Servers>
  <server>
    <name>something</name>
    <port>port</port>
  </server>
</Servers>

The main change to your code is not creating a new "root" element. The above example just uses the current root node from the existing server.xml and then just appends a new Server element and re-writes the file.

Solution 2:

To append a new data element,just do this...

Document doc = docBuilder.parse(is);        
Node root=doc.getFirstChild();
Element newserver=doc.createElement("new_server");
root.appendChild(newserver);

easy.... 'is' is an InputStream object. rest is similar to your code....tried it just now...

Solution 3:

You can parse the existing XML file into DOM and append new elements to the DOM. Very similar to what you did with creating brand new XML. I am assuming you do not have to worry about duplicate server. If you do have to worry about that, you will have to go through the elements in the DOM to check for duplicates.

DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = documentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();

/* parse existing file to DOM */
Document document = documentBuilder.parse(new File("exisgint/xml/file"));

Element root = document.getDocumentElement();

for (Server newServer : Collection<Server> bunchOfNewServers){
  Element server = Document.createElement("server");
  /* create and setup the server node...*/

 root.appendChild(server);
}

/* use whatever method to output DOM to XML (for example, using transformer like you did).*/