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.