Getting extra empty childNodes in XML

Programming Questions

sspboyd

Getting extra empty childNodes in XML

in Programming Questions • 10 months ago

I am pulling an XML feed from the We Feel Fine api. When I try to parse the feed every other childNode is empty.

The XML validates on W3School's XML validator.

Here's a snippet of what the xml looks like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<feeling sentence="i was smiling all weekend had this easing feeling in me and it was just good" feeling="good" born="1992" />
...

<feeling sentence="i think people feel this way some of the time it's just that i feel that way most of the time" born="1981" />
	</feelings>

Here's the code I'm using to test the feed.

void setup() {
background(255);
size(100, 100);
String url = "http://api.wefeelfine.org:8080/ShowFeelings?returnfields=sentence,feeling,gender,born&display=xml&agerange=0,10,20,30,40,50";
XML xml = loadXML(url);
for (int i = 0; i<xml.getChildCount(); i++){
XML childNode = xml.getChild(i);
println("childNode("+i+") = " + childNode);
}
}

The console output looks like this:

childNode(0) =
childNode(1) = <feeling born="1992" feeling="high" sentence="i don t feel so high now but it was predictable"/>
childNode(2) =
childNode(3) = <feeling born="1992" feeling="good" sentence="i feel good"/>

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Stephen

Replies(5)

amnon.owed

Re: Getting extra empty childNodes in XML

10 months ago

How about this?

Adapted Code

void setup() {
background(255);
size(100, 100);
String url = "http://api.wefeelfine.org:8080/ShowFeelings?returnfields=sentence,feeling,gender,born&display=xml&agerange=0,10,20,30,40,50";
XML xml = loadXML(url);
XML[] children = xml.getChildren("feeling");
for (int i=0; i<children.length; i++){
println("childNode("+i+") = " + children[i]);
}
}

PhiLho

Re: Getting extra empty childNodes in XML

10 months ago

A fact that not so much people know is that in XML, the characters between the tags (spaces for indentation, new lines and carriage returns) are also children of the tag enclosing them (the parent).
So, enumerating all children also bring these seemingly empty elements.
The best way to avoid this problem is to iterate on specific tags, as shown by amnon.owed.

demiguel...

Re: Re: Getting extra empty childNodes in XML

10 months ago

Thanks, that explains a lot of trouble i was having parsing xml with processing 2+

One question, why would indents and carriage returns be counted as children... i mean is it useful for some purpose?

It wasn´t happening with processing 1.5...

sspboyd

Re: Getting extra empty childNodes in XML

10 months ago

That's great. Thanks very much to both of you!

PhiLho

Re: Getting extra empty childNodes in XML

10 months ago

Processing 2.0 is using the standard XML library of Java, which conforms to the Dom specification of XML documents.
Whitespace and newlines are just plain text, just like the one you see in <foo>some text</foo>, there is no reason to distinguish them.
Beside, it would allow to parse an XML file, alter it, and output it with exactly the same style (indentation, etc.).

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