PL/SQL - REST Call and XML Parsing

Looking for an example to make a REST API call in PL/SQL and parse the xml response from the call? Here is one way to do it.

DECLARE
 req     utl_http.req;
 resp    utl_http.resp;
 line    VARCHAR2(1024);
 url     VARCHAR2(1024);
 content VARCHAR2(1024);

 p       xmlparser.Parser;
 doc     xmldom.DOMDocument;
 element    xmldom.DOMElement;
 nodeList xmldom.DOMNodeList;
 node     xmldom.DOMNode;
BEGIN
 dbms_output.enable(1000000);

 url := utl_url.escape('http://host:port/app/rest/something');

 -- example xml response:
 --<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><something><name>Joe</name><age>40</age></something>

 req := utl_http.begin_request(url);
 utl_http.set_header(req, 'User-Agent', 'Mozilla/4.0');
 resp := utl_http.get_response(req);
 content := '';
 BEGIN
     LOOP
       utl_http.read_line(resp, line, TRUE);
       content := content || line;
     END LOOP;
     utl_http.end_response(resp);
     EXCEPTION
         WHEN utl_http.end_of_body THEN
           utl_http.end_response(resp);
 END;

 dbms_output.put_line(content);

 p := xmlparser.newParser;
 xmlparser.setValidationMode(p, FALSE);
 xmlparser.parseBuffer(p, content);
 doc  := xmlparser.getDocument(p);

 element := xmldom.getDocumentElement(doc);

 nodeList := xmldom.getElementsByTagName(element, 'name');
 node := xmldom.item(nodeList, 0);
 node := xmldom.getFirstChild(node);
 dbms_output.put_line('name: ' || xmldom.getNodeValue(node));

 nodeList := xmldom.getElementsByTagName(element, 'age');
 node := xmldom.item(nodeList, 0);
 node := xmldom.getFirstChild(node);
 dbms_output.put_line('age: ' || xmldom.getNodeValue(node));
END;

Ever stuck in eclipse splash screen?

There have been times my Spring Source Tool Suite (based on eclipse) won't start after a crash or machine restart after automatic windows update when IDE was running. It mainly get stuck in the splash screen after selecting the workspace. One way to get the IDE started is to remove .snap file from

.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources

under your workspace folder and start IDE again.