[XERCESJ-1033] Empty CDATA section is not retrievable (child is null)

• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 2.6.2
• Component/s: DOM (Level 3 Core)
• Environment: JDK 1.4.2
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Detlev Beutner
• Created: 07/Dec/04 10:32
• Updated: 10/Jan/06 13:52

Description

If a CDATA section is empty, ie <![CDATA[]]>, it is not possible to retrieve this node (eg by getFirstChild()). Instead, null is returned.
From org.w3c.dom.Node javadoc, getFirstChild() only returns null if there is no child. And if there is a CDATA section child, getNodeValue returns "content of the CDATA Section", so in this case by getFirstChild().getNodeValue() an empty string must be returned. In fact, by this call, a NullPointerException gets thrown.

XML-test-document:
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<test><![CDATA[]]></test>
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Java-test-program:
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import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;

import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;

public class XercesTester {

public static void main(String[] args) {
try{
DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder parser = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = parser.parse("c:/test.xml");
Element testNode = doc.getDocumentElement();
System.out.println("Test Root Node: " + testNode.getNodeName());
System.out.println("Node Value of Root Node: " + testNode.getNodeValue());
Node cDataNode = testNode.getFirstChild();
if (cDataNode == null)

{ System.out.println("CDATA Node is null - everything stopped, xml implementation failed!"); }

else

{ System.out.println("CDATA Node: " + cDataNode.getNodeName()); System.out.println("Node Value of CDATA Node: ---" + cDataNode.getNodeValue() + "---"); }

} catch (Exception e)

{ e.printStackTrace(); }

}
}
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