Check if XML Element exists

Question

How can someone validate that a specific element exists in an XML file? Say I have an ever changing XML file and I need to verify every element exists before reading/parsing

Answer 1

Following is a simple function to check if a particular node is present or not in the xml file.

public boolean envParamExists(String xmlFilePath, String paramName){
    try{
        Document doc = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(new File(xmlFilePath));
        doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
        if(doc.getElementsByTagName(paramName).getLength()>0)
            return true;
        else
            return false;
    }catch (Exception e) {
        //error handling
    }
    return false;
}