Is there a more elegant way to convert an XML Document to a String in Java than this code?

Here is the code currently used.

public String getStringFromDoc(org.w3c.dom.Document doc)    {
        try
        {
           DOMSource domSource = new DOMSource(doc);
           StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
           StreamResult result = new StreamResult(writer);
           TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
           Transformer transformer = tf.newTransformer();
           transformer.transform(domSource, result);
           writer.flush();
           return writer.toString();
        }
        catch(TransformerException ex)
        {
           ex.printStackTrace();
           return null;
        }
    }

From stackoverflow

• The transformer API is the only XML-standard way to transform from a DOM object to a serialized form (String in this case). As standard I mean SUN Java XML API for XML Processing.

  Other alternatives such as Xerces XMLSerializer or JDOM XMLOutputter are more direct methods (less code) but they are framework-specific.

  In my opinion the way you have used is the most elegant and most portable of all. By using a standard XML Java API you can plug the XML-Parser or XML-Transformer of your choice without changing the code(the same as JDBC drivers). Is there anything more elegant than that?

• This is a little more concise:

  try {
    Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
    StreamResult result = new StreamResult(new StringWriter());
    DOMSource source = new DOMSource(doc);
    transformer.transform(source, result);
    return result.getWriter().toString();
  } catch(TransformerException ex) {
    ex.printStackTrace();
    return null;
  }
  

  Otherwise you could use a library like XMLSerializer from Apache:

    //Serialize DOM
    OutputFormat format    = new OutputFormat (doc); 
    // as a String
    StringWriter stringOut = new StringWriter ();    
    XMLSerializer serial   = new XMLSerializer (stringOut, 
                                                format);
    serial.serialize(doc);
    // Display the XML
    System.out.println(stringOut.toString());
  

• You could use XOM to perhaps do this:

  org.w3c.dom.Document domDocument = ...;
  nu.xom.Document xomDocument = 
      nu.xom.converters.DOMConverter.convert(domDocument);
  String xml = xomDocument.toXML();
  

  Jonik : +1, XOM (and other similar libraries) can really simplify matters.

• Relies on DOM Level3 Load/Save:

  public String getStringFromDoc(org.w3c.dom.Document doc)    {
      DOMImplementationLS domImplementation = (DOMImplementationLS) doc.getImplementation();
      LSSerializer lsSerializer = domImplementation.createLSSerializer();
      return lsSerializer.writeToString(doc);   
  }
  

• This is an old question, but still relevent:

  Using the questioner's method (which is the most commonly cited), on my box I got a 35-45ms conversion time.

  By contrast, the LSSerializer and Apache XMLSerializer converted the same XML in 5-15ms