How can I get JDOM/XPath to ignore namespaces?

Question

I need to process an XML DOM, preferably with JDOM, where I can do XPath search on nodes. I know the node names or paths, but I want to ignore namespaces completely<

Answer 1

Here is a jDOM2 solution that has been running in a production setting for a year with no trouble.

public class JdomHelper {

    private static final SAXHandlerFactory FACTORY = new SAXHandlerFactory() {
        @Override
        public SAXHandler createSAXHandler(JDOMFactory factory) {
            return new SAXHandler() {
                @Override
                public void startElement(
                        String namespaceURI, String localName, String qName, Attributes atts) throws SAXException {
                    super.startElement("", localName, qName, atts);
                }
                @Override
                public void startPrefixMapping(String prefix, String uri) throws SAXException {
                    return;
                }
            };
        }
    };


    /** Get a {@code SAXBuilder} that ignores namespaces.
     * Any namespaces present in the xml input to this builder will be omitted from the resulting {@code Document}. */
    public static SAXBuilder getSAXBuilder() {
        // Note: SAXBuilder is NOT thread-safe, so we instantiate a new one for every call.
        SAXBuilder saxBuilder = new SAXBuilder();
        saxBuilder.setSAXHandlerFactory(FACTORY);
        return saxBuilder;
    }

}