Remove XML node based on attribute value

Question

I have the following XML file from which I am trying to remove the whole AuditTrailEntry node if the EventType matched start or assign. I've seen a similar case here on stackoverflow but the solution just doesn't work for me, I always get an error - NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldChild is not a child of this node. Do you have an idea how to solve this?

<AuditTrailEntry>
                <Data>
                    <Attribute name="elementId">sid-9E1E4EAD-5182-482F-9D5C-10961CA5BE2D</Attribute>
                    <Attribute name="processId">sid-C83E31C0-4CCC-4763-90C2-E09F1537D1EC</Attribute>
                </Data>
                <WorkflowModelElement>Test</WorkflowModelElement>
                <EventType>assign</EventType>
                <Timestamp>2021-06-17T13:20:10.557+00:00</Timestamp>
            </AuditTrailEntry>
            <AuditTrailEntry>
                <Data>
                    <Attribute name="elementId">sid-9E1E4EAD-5182-482F-9D5C-10961CA5BE2D</Attribute>
                    <Attribute name="processId">sid-C83E31C0-4CCC-4763-90C2-E09F1537D1EC</Attribute>
                    <Attribute name="resourceId">sid-B0EBDEE1-4649-4AB6-B9AD-159188A0A02E</Attribute>
                </Data>
                <WorkflowModelElement>Test</WorkflowModelElement>
                <EventType>start</EventType>
                <Timestamp>2021-06-17T13:56:47.003+00:00</Timestamp>
                <Originator>Test-000002</Originator>
            </AuditTrailEntry>
            <AuditTrailEntry>
                <Data>
                    <Attribute name="elementId">sid-9E1E4EAD-5182-482F-9D5C-10961CA5BE2D</Attribute>
                    <Attribute name="processId">sid-C83E31C0-4CCC-4763-90C2-E09F1537D1EC</Attribute>
                    <Attribute name="resourceCost">0.8558947222222222</Attribute>
                    <Attribute name="resourceId">sid-B0EBDEE1-4649-4AB6-B9AD-159188A0A02E</Attribute>
                </Data>
                <WorkflowModelElement>Test</WorkflowModelElement>
                <EventType>complete</EventType>
                <Timestamp>2021-06-17T14:01:27.114+00:00</Timestamp>
                <Originator>Test-000002</Originator>
            </AuditTrailEntry>

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.OutputKeys;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;

public class MainClass {


    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        File f = new File("input.mxml");
        Document XML_DOC = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(f);
        NodeList entries = XML_DOC.getElementsByTagName("AuditTrailEntry");
        //printDocument(XML_DOC);


        for (int i = 0; i < entries.getLength(); i++) {
            Node entry = entries.item(i);
            if(elementStatus(entry)) {
                XML_DOC.getChildNodes().item(0).removeChild(entry);

        }}

//        System.out.println("");System.out.println("");
//        System.out.println("------------------------------------");
//        printDocument(XML_DOC);
    }

    public static void printDocument(Document doc) throws IOException, TransformerException {
        TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        Transformer transformer = tf.newTransformer();
        transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "no");
        transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.METHOD, "xml");
        transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
        transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "UTF-8");
        transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "4");


        transformer.transform(new DOMSource(doc), new StreamResult(new OutputStreamWriter(System.out, "UTF-8")));
    }

    public static boolean elementStatus(Node node) {
        if (node.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
            Element e = (Element) node;
            if (e.getElementsByTagName("EventType").item(0).getTextContent().contentEquals("start"))
                return true;
        }
        return false;
    }

}```

Answer 1

It is much better to use XSLT for such tasks.

An XML file shall be well-formed with a root node.

XSLT has so called Identity Transform pattern.

XSLT

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
    <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

    <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>

    <!--<xsl:template match="AuditTrailEntry[EventType=('assign','start')]"/>-->
    <xsl:template match="AuditTrailEntry[EventType='assign' or EventType='start']"/>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Java

import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import java.io.*;

public class Process {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String XSLTFILE = "e:/Temp/Process.xslt";
        String INFILE = "e:/Temp/Input.xml";
        String OUTFILE = "e:/Temp/Output.xml";

        try {
            // I/O
            StreamSource input = new StreamSource(new File(INFILE));
            StreamSource xslt = new StreamSource(new File(XSLTFILE));
            StreamResult output = new StreamResult(new File(OUTFILE));

            // Transformation
            TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
            Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer(xslt);
            transformer.transform(input, output);
        } catch (TransformerConfigurationException tce) {
            tce.printStackTrace();
        } catch (TransformerException te) {
            te.printStackTrace();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Using XPath, things becomes much easier:

    XPath xpath = XPathFactory
            .newInstance()
            .newXPath();

    String expression = "//AuditTrailEntry[EventType='assign' or EventType='start']";
    NodeList list = (NodeList) xpath.evaluate(expression, XML_DOC, XPathConstants.NODESET);

    for (int i=0; i < list.getLength(); ++i) {
        Node target = list.item(i);
        target.getParentNode().removeChild(target);
    }