Java tutorial
import java.io.StringReader; import java.io.StringWriter; import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder; import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory; import javax.xml.transform.Transformer; import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory; import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource; import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult; import org.w3c.dom.Document; import org.w3c.dom.Element; import org.xml.sax.InputSource; public class Main { static public void main(String[] arg) throws Exception { DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); dbf.setValidating(true); dbf.setNamespaceAware(true); dbf.setIgnoringElementContentWhitespace(true); DocumentBuilder builder = dbf.newDocumentBuilder(); StringReader sr = new StringReader("<tag>java2s.com</tag>"); Document document = builder.parse(new InputSource(sr)); deleteFirstElement(document); TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance(); Transformer trans = tf.newTransformer(); StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); trans.transform(new DOMSource(document), new StreamResult(sw)); System.out.println(sw.toString()); } public static void deleteFirstElement(Document doc) { Element root = doc.getDocumentElement(); if (root.getFirstChild() instanceof Element) { Element child = (Element) root.getFirstChild(); root.removeChild(child); } } }