xml parser

[kkGG]

I've never done this sort of parsing before and I'm having trouble getting it to work for my purposes. I'm using DOM parser to parse an xml file and then I want to retrieve all the values under "OperatingParameters." My code so far ... and the section of the xml file I'm interested in follow. I know the way I've done is wrong. Should I be using attributes instead...?

import java.io.File;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;

public class XMLhandler {
    
    private File xmlFile;
    private Document doc;
    
    public XMLhandler(File file) { xmlFile = file; }
    
    public void parse() {
        DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        
        try {
            DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
            doc = dBuilder.parse(xmlFile);
        } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
    }    
    
    public String[] getElements(String tagName) {
        String[] s = new String[100];
        
        Element element = doc.getDocumentElement();
        NodeList list = element.getElementsByTagName(tagName);
        
        for (int i = 0; i < element.getLength(); i++) {
            Element item = (Element) list.item(i);
            
        }
        
        return s;
    }
}

<OperatingParameters
      Mode="Mass sweep"
      Focus1="-20"
      Focus2="-20"
      ElectronEnergy="70"
      FilamentEmission="2.0"
      AutoZero="Off"
      ScanMode="Sweep"
      Filament="1"
      PressureUnits="Torr"
      EnableElectronMultiplier="0"
      MultiplierVoltage="1110"
   />

[Tolls]

What happens when you use that code?
What do you see, and what do you want to see?

[kkGG]

Well, the NodeList I get back if, say, I were to print it contains only one element "OperatingParameters." what I want to be able to do is get a list of all the individual elements that follow OperatingParameters in the xml code I posted.

[Tolls]

As you guessed, though, there are no elements.
There are, however, attributes.
You could use getAttributes() on the Element and cycle through the Map that's returned?

[kkGG]

so this method should return all attributes in the element?

[Tolls]

Yes.
Here's the API for it (which I forgot to link to earlier).

[kkGG]

hmm...

If I insert this into my code:

Element element = doc.getDocumentElement();
NamedNodeMap map = element.getAttributes();
System.out.println(map.getLength());

map.getLength(); is zero

[Tolls]

Because your document element (which is the root of your XML) probably doesn't have any attributes?
I thought you were going to do this on the elements in your NodeList?