Routing output of xalan method to String returns nothing

[plastic_wrapped]

Hi,

I wrote a class that uses Apache xalan to process a given XML file by applying a XSLT stylesheet (code below). The main method works fine when it writes the results to a file, but in the second method, nothing happens when I try to send the results to a String via StringWriter.

Everything I found online about xalan only showed writing the results to a file. Writing to a file seems very wasteful when the calling program will need to immediately re-read it. I'd think I should put the results into a String and pass that back to the calling program, without ever saving it to disk.

Is file i/o so cheap enough I should stick with that method? If not, how can I get the value into a String to pass?

Thanks for your help,

Elias


package com.newburycomics;

import java.io.*;

import javax.xml.transform.*;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.*;
import org.apache.xalan.xsltc.trax.XSLTCSource;

import org.w3c.dom.Document;

public class XSLTApplicator {

//this is the main method that works

public static void main(String args[]) {
javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory myFactory = javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory.newInstance();

//this is the XSL stylesheet
String strFileName = args[0];
File fileXSL = new File(strFileName);
StreamSource srcXSL = new StreamSource(fileXSL);

try {

Transformer myTransformer = myFactory.newTransformer(srcXSL);

//this is the source XML file
strFileName = args[1];
File fileXML = new File(strFileName);
StreamSource srcXML = new StreamSource(fileXML);


//the destination XML file
strFileName = args[2];
File fileResult = new File(strFileName);
StreamResult rsltResult = new StreamResult(fileResult);

try {

myTransformer.transform(srcXML, rsltResult);

} catch (TransformerException xTE) {
System.out.println(xTE);
}

} catch (TransformerConfigurationException xTCE) {
System.out.println(xTCE);
}

}//main

//this method compiles but
//doesn't return the XML

//I call this method from a wrapper class
//just so I can have the two in the same file
//doesn't change if I make it the main method

public static String ApplyStylesheet(String strXSL, String strURL) {

String strResult = "This will hold the resulting XML";

javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory myFactory = javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory.newInstance();

//get XSL location from args
String strFileName = strXSL;
File fileXSL = new File(strFileName);
StreamSource srcXSL = new StreamSource(fileXSL);

try {

Transformer myTransformer = myFactory.newTransformer(srcXSL);

//strURL represents a local file right now but will be a web services request later
File fileXML = new File(strURL);
StreamSource srcXML = new StreamSource(fileXML);

//File fileResult = new File(strFileName);
StringWriter swResult = new StringWriter();
StreamResult srResult = new StreamResult(swResult);


try {

//srResult.setWriter(swResult);

//am I supposed to do this here? didn't work,
//even when I removed swResult from the StreamResult constructor


myTransformer.transform(srcXML, srResult);

//strResult = "worked this far";
swResult.write(strResult);
// this line doesn't change the value of strResult
//I also tried removing this line when the setWriter method was active


} catch (TransformerException xTE) {
System.out.println("error: " + xTE);
}

} catch (TransformerConfigurationException xTCE) {
System.out.println("error: " + xTCE);
}

return strResult;

}//ApplyStylesheet

}//class

[plastic_wrapped]

Figured it out. The write method on the swResult object was incorrect:

swResult.write(strResult);

I replaced the write method with this:

strResult = swResult.toString();

And everything worked as expected.