Creating and Modifying XML Documents - Beginning Java - page 1289

the getAttributes() method for any node type, and it returns null if an element has no attributes. Thus,
you could omit the test for the element type in the if condition, and the code works just as well.
The NamedNodeMap interface declares the following methods for retrieving nodes from the collection:
• Node item(int index) : Returns the node at position index .
• int getLength() : Returns the number of Node references in the collection.
• Node getNamedItem(String name) : Returns the node with the node name name .
• Node getNamedItemNS(String uri,String localName) : Returns the node with the name loc-
alName in the namespace at uri .
Obviously the last two methods apply when you know what attributes to expect. You can apply the first two
methods to iterate through the collection of attributes in a NamedNodeMap :
if(node.hasAttributes()) {
NamedNodeMap attrs = node.getAttributes();
for(int i = 0 ; i < attrs.getLength() ; ++i) {
Attr attribute = (Attr)attrs.item(i);
// Process the attribute...

}

}

You now are in a position to obtain each of the attributes for an element as a reference of type Attr . To
get at the attribute name and value you call the getName() and getValue() methods declared in the Attr
interface, respectively, both of which return a value of type String . You can put that into practice in another
example.

TRY IT OUT: Listing Elements with Attributes
You can modify the listNodes() method in the previous example to include attributes with the ele-
ments. Here's the revised version:

static void listNodes(Node node) {
System.out.println(indent + " Node: " + nodeName);
short type =node.getNodeType();
System.out.println(indent + " Node Type: " + nodeType(type));
if(type == TEXT_NODE){
System.out.println(indent + " Content is: " +
((Text)node).getWholeText());
} else if(node.hasAttributes()) {
System.out.println(indent+" Element Attributes are:");
NamedNodeMap attrs = node.getAttributes(); //...get the

attributes
for(int i = 0 ; i < attrs.getLength() ; ++i) {
Attr attribute = (Attr)attrs.item(i); // Get an

attribute
System.out.println(indent + " " + attribute.getName() +
" = " + attribute.getValue());