How do I add and remove elements from XML document in JDOM?

The List returned by the getChildren() method call is a java.util.List. Any modification to the List object immediately reflected in the backing document. This make the manipulation of the XML document easy.

You can also see how we can add a new Element to the document by calling the addContent() method.

package org.kodejava.jdom;

import org.jdom2.Document;
import org.jdom2.Element;
import org.jdom2.JDOMException;
import org.jdom2.input.SAXBuilder;
import org.jdom2.output.Format;
import org.jdom2.output.XMLOutputter;

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;

public class JDOMAddRemoveElement {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String xml = """
                <root>
                    <user name="Alice" age="21" dob="20-01-1988"/>
                    <user name="Bob" age="23" dob="01-05-1986"/>
                </root>""";

        SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder();
        try {
            Document document = builder.build(
                    new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.getBytes()));

            // Adding a new element to the root of the document using the
            // addContent method.
            document.getRootElement().addContent(
                    new Element("people").setAttribute("id", "1"));
            document.getRootElement().addContent(
                    new Element("people").setAttribute("id", "1"));

            // Add a new element. By adding a new element to the List of
            // children we can modify the xml document. Using
            // java.util.List makes the modification of XML document 
            // simple and easy.
            List<Element> children = document.getRootElement().getChildren();
            children.add(new Element("user")
                    .setAttribute("name", "Carol")
                    .setAttribute("age", "25")
                    .setAttribute("dob", "06-03-1984"));

            // Add element to the beginning of the xml document.
            children.add(0, new Element("user")
                    .setAttribute("name", "Jimmy")
                    .setAttribute("age", "25")
                    .setAttribute("dob", "16-05-1984"));

            // Remove the fourth element.
            children.remove(3);

            XMLOutputter outputter =
                    new XMLOutputter(Format.getPrettyFormat());
            outputter.output(document, System.out);
        } catch (JDOMException | IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

The result of this code is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
    <user name="Jimmy" age="25" dob="16-05-1984" />
    <user name="Alice" age="21" dob="20-01-1988" />
    <user name="Bob" age="23" dob="01-05-1986" />
    <people id="1" />
    <user name="Carol" age="25" dob="06-03-1984" />
</root>

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jdom</groupId>
    <artifactId>jdom2</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.6.1</version>
</dependency>

Author
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Wayan

Founder at Kode Java

A programmer, runner and recreational diver, lives on the island of Bali, Indonesia. Programming in Java, Spring Framework, Hibernate / JPA, MySQL. To support me working on this project, buy me a cup of coffee, every little bit helps. Thank you.

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