Parse XML SAX with no </> (end tags) for child nodes.

[munish]

Hi ,

I am trying to parse an xml like below:

<top>

<num> Number: 301
<title> International Organized Crime

<desc> Description:
Identify organizations that participate in international criminal

<narr> Narrative:
A relevant document must as a minimum identify the organization and the
type of illegal activity (e.g., Columbian cartel exporting cocaine).

</top>


<top>

<num> Number: 302
<title> Poliomyelitis and Post-Polio

<desc> Description:
Is the disease of Poliomyelitis (polio) under control in the
world?

<narr> Narrative:
Relevant documents should contain data or outbreaks of the
polio disease (large or small scale), medical protection

</top>

but getting following error while parsing with sax.

The element type "narr" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "</narr>"

code:

public class QueryExpantion {
void run1(){
try {
SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
SAXParser saxParser = factory.newSAXParser();
DefaultHandler handler = new DefaultHandler() {
boolean top = false;
boolean desc = false;
boolean num = false;
boolean narr = false;
String topString = "";
String descString = "";
String numString = "";
String narrString = "";

public void startElement(String uri, String localName,
String qName, Attributes attributes)
throws SAXException {
if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("top")) {
top = true;
}
if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("desc")) {
desc = true;
}
if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("num")) {
num = true;
}
if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("narr")) {
narr = true;
}
}

public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length)
throws SAXException {
if (top) {
topString = new String(ch, start, length);
}

if (desc) {
descString = new String(ch, start, length);
}
if (num) {
numString = new String(ch, start, length);
}

if (narr) {
narrString = new String(ch, start, length);
}
}

public void endElement(String uri, String localName,
String qName) throws SAXException {
if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("top")) {
num = false;
desc = false;
narr = false;
top = false;
}
}
};

saxParser.parse("/home/munish/Documents/trec-demo-master/test-data/topics.301-450", handler);

} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

So is it possible to parse this with SAX or i need to go for some different apporach

[masijade]

THAT is NOT proper XML. You could use an XML parser (MAYBE) to get the varying "top" groups, but the rest WILL NOT parse with any XML parser, and, because it contains a bunch of "open" tags, but no "close" tags, you probably can't even parse the "top" groups.

[JosAH]

XML is not HTML; i.e. it is very 'strict' when it comes to matching open and close tags; e.g. in HTML you can make a mess out of it (some Lisps had a similar 'feature' where a single ']' matched all open'('); thank the gods for XMLs 'strictness'.

kind regards,

Jos