Hi,

I'm only a few days old to Java, and trying to become familiar with its
ins and outs. I'm trying to write a routine to load a simple XML
configuration file:

<root>
    <database>
        <host>thehost</host>
        <user>theuser</user>
        <password>mypassword</password>
    </database>
</root>

class blah {
private static String configFilename = "agentProfiler.conf.xml";
private static String dbHost, dbUser, dbPass;

...

public static void loadConfiguration() {
    XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
    InputSource inputSource = null;

    try {
        inputSource = new InputSource(new FileInputStream(configFilename));
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        System.out.println("Configuration file " + configFilename + "
not found.");
        System.exit(-1);
    }

    try {
        dbHost = xpath.evaluate("/root/database/host",     inputSource);
        dbPass = xpath.evaluate("/root/database/password", inputSource);

        System.out.println("host=" + dbHost);
        System.out.println("user=" + dbUser);
    } catch (XPathExpressionException e) {
        System.out.println("Couldn't parse the configuration file. You
may have an error in your syntax.");
        e.printStackTrace();
        System.exit(-1);
    }
}

...

}

The problem I'm having is that the first xpath expression evaluates
fine. Any subsequent expression throws an IOException (by way of
XPathExpressionException) that it can't find the file. Are InputSource's
one-time use only, or is there something I'm missing?

Also, I'm trying to pin down exactly how try/catch blocks should look
with regards to declarations and such. (E.g., if I decided to declare
inputSource inside the try/catch, Java complains it can't find the
variable if I want to use it outside the block later, which I'm betting
is a scope issue. But if I don't 'null' it beforehand, Java complains it
may not be initialized. What's the proper way to do this?)

Thanks much for any help.

- Josh