Java XML Parser to return all tags at the same level

TLDR of what I'm trying to do:

• Use an xml document to store representation of classes.

• Use some parser class to recurse through the file and instantiate instances of those classes.

• I am currently having issues with getting child elements (and not grandchildren) of the nodeList.

Thanks in Advance.

Suppose I have the following xml document

====== data.xml ======
<document>
    <tag>
        <child1> some content here </child1>
        <child2> some other content </child2>
    </tag>

    <tag>
        <child1> interesting content here </child1>
        <child2>
            <tag>
                <child1> a b c d </child1>
                <child2> e f g h </child2>
            </tag>
        </child2>
    </tag>
</document>

I have tried using the xFile parser to get all tag nodes. However, when I do the following:

public static void parseXML() {
    File file = new File("src//data//data.xml");
    DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = null;

    try {
        documentBuilder = documentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
    } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    Document doc = null;

    try {
        doc = documentBuilder.parse(file);
    } catch (SAXException | IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    try {
        XPathFactory xPathFactory = XPathFactory.newInstance();
        XPath xPath = xPathFactory.newXPath();
        XPathExpression expr = xPath.compile("//document//tag");

        NodeList nodeList = (NodeList) expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);

        for (int i = 0; i < nodeList.getLength(); i++) {
            System.out.println(i);
            System.out.println(nodeList.item(i).getTextContent());
        }

    } catch (XPathExpressionException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

I get the following output:

0

         some content here 
         some other content 
    
1

         interesting content here 
        
            
                 a b c d 
                 e f g h 
            
        
    
2

                 a b c d 
                 e f g h 

How do I get it to ONLY return the <tag> elements which are directly nested in <document> (because the path provided to xPath.compile(String string); is //document//tag

To answer the specific question you have posed - I would change this

    XPathExpression expr = xPath.compile("//document//tag");

to this

    XPathExpression expr = xPath.compile("/document/tag[1]/*");

The // matches all sub nodes and according to your structure you don't have any.