Rename or Remove Namespace in XML file

Recently while working with web services, I stumbled on a problem where in I had to read the the XMLs and convert them into object.

Now this can be done easily, if you have WSDL but I dont usually encounter easy problems.

All I had was an XML and I have manually create an object for it. However, JAXB unmarshaller wont convert it because of namespaces. Hence, I wrote this program to remove namespaces which can be used to rename namespaces as well.

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/** * Recursively renames the namespace of a node. * * @param node * the starting node. * @param namespace * the new namespace. Supplying <tt>null</tt> removes the namespace. */ public static void renameNamespace(Node node, String namespace) { Document document = node.getOwnerDocument(); if (node.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) { String nodename = node.getNodeName(); Element e = (Element) node; NamedNodeMap attrs = node.getAttributes(); String attributeName = null; //rename the namespace in the tag if (nodename.lastIndexOf(":") > 0) { nodename = (String) nodename.subSequence(nodename.lastIndexOf(":") + 1, nodename.length()); nodename = namespace + ":" + nodename; } document.renameNode(node, namespace, nodename); } NodeList list = node.getChildNodes(); //call recursively for (int i = 0; i < list.getLength(); ++i) { renameNamespace(list.item(i), namespace); } }

Rename Namespaces

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/** * Recursively removes the namespace of a node. * * @param node * the starting node. * @param namespace * the new namespace. Supplying <tt>null</tt> removes the namespace. */ public static void removeNamespace(Node node) { Document document = node.getOwnerDocument(); if (node.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) { String nodename = node.getNodeName(); Element e = (Element) node; NamedNodeMap attrs = node.getAttributes(); String attributeName = null; //remove the tag which defines namespace for (int i = 0; i < attrs.getLength(); i++) { if (attrs.item(i) != null) { attributeName = attrs.item(i).getNodeName(); if (attributeName.startsWith("xmlns")) { e.removeAttribute(attrs.item(i).getNodeName()); i--; } } } //remove the namespace in the tag if (nodename.lastIndexOf(":") > 0) { nodename = (String) nodename.subSequence(nodename.lastIndexOf(":") + 1, nodename.length()); } document.renameNode(node, null, nodename); } NodeList list = node.getChildNodes(); //call recursively for (int i = 0; i < list.getLength(); ++i) { removeNamespace(list.item(i), namespace); } }

Remove Namespaces

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private static void print(PrintStream out, Document doc) throws IOException { OutputFormat fmt = new OutputFormat(); fmt.setIndenting(true); XMLSerializer ser = new XMLSerializer(out, fmt); ser.serialize(doc); } public static void main(String[] args) { try { File fXmlFile = new File("src\\test\\xyz.xml"); DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); DocumentBuilder dBuilder; dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder(); Document doc = dBuilder.parse(fXmlFile); renameNamespace(doc.getDocumentElement().getParentNode(), "renamed"); //removeNamespace(doc.getDocumentElement().getParentNode()); print(System.out, doc); } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } catch (SAXException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } }

Test Code

After removing the namespaces the unmarshaller worked like charm.