Find an element by name package com.ack.xml.dom; import com.ack.util.XmlUtil; import org.w3c.dom.Document; import org.w3c.dom.Element; import org.w3c.dom.NodeList; import org.xml.sax.InputSource; public class FindAnElementByName { public static void main( String[] args ) throws Exception { // create an input source for target document and parse it InputSource is = new InputSource( "resources\\personal.xml" ); Document d = XmlUtil.getDocument( is ); // get all tags in the document with the name email NodeList emails = d.getElementsByTagName( "email" ); for( int i = 0; i < emails.getLength(); i++ ) { // for every email tag Element person = (Element) emails.item( i ); // print out the text value. note that we have to get the value of // first child of the email element which is a text node System.out.println( person.getFirstChild().getNodeValue() ); } } }