Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) General Discussion

[http://www.onjava.com/lpt/a/5554|http://www.onjava.com/lpt/a/5554]

Hi All,

I am trying to extract/parse the content of the following nested HTML Patient table using JDK 6.1 XPath Class without success:

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="782" id="main-content">
<tr>
        <td valign="top" class="top">                        
                <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">                        
  
                        <tr>
                                <td valign="top" class="top">    
 
<!-- un-delay results 14/10/2004  ..................................  --->

        <div class="greyBorder">
        <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="100%">
                <tr>
                        <td class="propType">&nbsp;</td>
                        <td class="propType"><b>Patient</b></td>
                        <td class="propType"><b>Firstname</b></td>
                        <td class="propType"><b>Surname</b></td>
                        <td class="propType" align="right"><b>Date of birth</b></td>
                        <td class="propType">Sex</td>
                </tr>
                      
                        <tr class="smallnarrow">
                                
                                <td class="even" width="10" align="left"></td>
                                <td class="even" style="vertical-align: middle;">Clinic</td>        
                                <td class="even" style="vertical-align: middle;">John</td>                
                                <td class="even" style="vertical-align: middle;">Smith</td> 
                                <td class="even" align="right" style="vertical-align: middle;">10/02/1940</td>
                                <td class="even" width="10" style="vertical-align: middle;">M</td>
                        </tr>
        </table>
        </div>
    
        <div style="margin-top:10px;">        
         <br> <br>

        <br>
        </div>

        <div align="center" style="margin-bottom: 20px;">
        .........
</td></tr></table></td></tr></table>

Below is the content of XPathEvaluator.java used to extract/parse the above HTML file:

import javax.xml.xpath.*;
import java.io.*;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.apache.xpath.NodeSet;
public class XPathEvaluator{

    public void evaluateDocument(File xmlDocument){

    try
    {
        XPathFactory factory=XPathFactory.newInstance();
        XPath xPath=factory.newXPath();
        InputSource inputSource=new InputSource(new FileInputStream(xmlDocument));
        XPathExpression xPathExpression=xPath.compile("/table[@id='main-content']");

        String expression = "/table[@id='main-content']";
        inputSource=new InputSource(new FileInputStream(xmlDocument));
        NodeList shows = (NodeList) xPath.evaluate(expression, inputSource, XPathConstants.NODESET);

        for (int i = 0; i < shows.getLength(); i++)
        {
            Element show = (Element) shows.item(i);
            System.out.println("The value of show.getTagName(): " + show.getTagName());
            System.out.println("The value of show.getTextContent(): " + show.getTextContent());
        }
    }
    catch(IOException  e){}
    catch(XPathExpressionException e){}
    }

    public static void main(String[] argv) 
    {
        XPathEvaluator evaluator=new XPathEvaluator();
        File xmlDocument = new File("C:/Temp/HTMLTable.txt");
        evaluator.evaluateDocument(xmlDocument);
    }
}

This code has worked successfully on catalogue.xml from http://www.onjava.com/lpt/a/5554 tutorial but generated the following error when trying to parse the above HTML file:

*[Fatal Error] :1:78: White spaces are required between publicId and systemId.*

Am I using the wrong tool? I have used the htmlparser in the past but could not achieve the same objective.

Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jack