Java Remove empty XML tags

Question

I\'m looking for a simple Java snippet to remove empty tags from a (any) XML structure

    bla
    <         


        

Answer 1

To remove all empty tags, even if they are one after another, one possibile solution is:

 private void removeEmptyTags(Document document) {
    List listNode = new ArrayList();
    findListEmptyTags(document.getRootElement(), listNode);
    if (listNode.size() == 0)
        return;

    for (Node node : listNode) {
        node.getParent().removeChild(node);
    }
    removeEmptyTags(document);
}

private void findListEmptyTags(Node node, List listNode) {

    if (node != null && node.getChildCount() == 0 && "".equals(node.getValue()) && ((Element) node).getAttributeCount() == 0) {
        listNode.add(node);
        return;
    }
    // recurse the children
    for (int i = 0; i < node.getChildCount(); i++) {
        findListEmptyTags(node.getChild(i), listNode);
    }
}