Get element name from XML in Java DOM

I had the same issue, this is my implementation,

public String getTagValue(org.w3c.dom.Document xmlDoc, String tagName) throws Exception {
        xmlDoc.getDocumentElement().normalize();

        NodeList nodeList = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName(tagName);

        for (int temp = 0; temp < nodeList.getLength(); temp++) {
            Node nNode = nodeList.item(temp);
            if (nNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
                org.w3c.dom.Element eElement = (org.w3c.dom.Element) nNode;
                return eElement.getFirstChild().getNodeValue();
            }
        }
        return "-1";
    }

One way to do this is to start reading from movies tag instead of the movie tag. Not sure if this is what you are looking for !!.

NodeList nodes = doc.getElementsByTagName("movies");

Element element = (Element) nodes.item(0);
NodeList movieList = element.getElementsByTagName("movie");
for (int i = 0; i < movieList.getLength(); i++) {
    Element movieElement = (Element) movieList.item(i);
    System.out.println(movieElement.getAttributes().getNamedItem("id").getNodeValue());
    NodeList name = movieElement.getElementsByTagName("title");
    NodeList year = movieElement.getElementsByTagName("year");
    NodeList genres = movieElement.getElementsByTagName("genres");
    Element genreline = (Element) genres.item(0);

    System.out.println(name.item(0).getFirstChild().getTextContent());
    System.out.println(year.item(0).getFirstChild().getTextContent());
    System.out.println(genreline.getElementsByTagName("genre").item(0).getTextContent() 
               + ":" + genreline.getElementsByTagName("genre").item(1).getTextContent());
}

Output :

: godfather
: The Godfather
: 1972
: Crime:Drama

I suggest you read up on XPath. Here are a few examples.

For example, to read the year for your movies you could use the XPath...

/mdb/movies/movie/year/text()