Text nodes are added using the appendChild() call, like Elements.

Resulting XML

<top>Hello, world</top>

Adding Attributes with the DOM

// Create a new document Document doc = builder.newDocument(); // Create the top element Element top = doc.createElement("top"); // Create Text Node Text text = doc.createTextNode("Hello, world"); // Add it to the top top.appendChild(text);

As mentioned above, the value of a text node is retrieved using getNodeValue(). The name of a text node is always #text. Normally, you'll either use instanceof or getNodeType() to tell if the node is a text node, but testing the name against #text will work.

The following function recursively prints all the text children of an element. It tests against CharacterData so CDATA sections will also be printed.

void printText(Node node) { for (; node != null; node = node.getNextSibling()) { if (node instanceof CharacterData) System.out.print(ptr.getNodeValue()); printText(node.getFirstChild()); } }