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Effective XML processing with DOM and XPath in Java

Analysis of many projects yields advice and suggested code

  public static Node setValue(Node startNode, String value, String xql)
    throws Exception
  {
    Node targetNode = XPathAPI.selectSingleNode( startNode,xql );

    NodeList children = targetNode.getChildNodes();
    int index = 0;
    int length = children.getLength();

    // Remove all of the current contents
    for(index = 0; index < length; index++) {
      targetNode.removeChild( children.item( index ) );
    }

    // Add in the new value
    Document doc = startNode.getOwnerDocument();
    targetNode.appendChild( doc.createTextNode(value) );
        
    return targetNode;
  }

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