Java tutorial
//package com.java2s; /* Copyright 2014 Michael K Martin This file is part of Civet. Civet is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Lesser GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. Civet is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the Lesser GNU General Public License along with Civet. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. */ import org.w3c.dom.Element; import org.w3c.dom.Node; import org.w3c.dom.NodeList; public class Main { public static Element findFirstChildElementByName(Node node, String sName) { if (node == null || sName == null) return null; if (node.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) { if (sName.equals(node.getNodeName())) { return (Element) node; } else { NodeList nodes = node.getChildNodes(); for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) { Node n = nodes.item(i); if (n.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) { if (sName.equals(n.getNodeName())) { return (Element) n; } else { Element nextNode = findFirstChildElementByName(n, sName); if (nextNode != null) return nextNode; } } } } } // Should only reach here if a non-Element node is passed in return null; } }