code: public static String getTextContent(Node element) {
          StringBuffer text = new StringBuffer();
          NodeList childNodes = element.getChildNodes();
          for (int i=0; i< childNodes.getLength(); i++) {
              Node child = childNodes.item(i);
              if (child instanceof Text) {
                  text.append(child.getNodeValue());
              }
          }
  
          return text.toString();
      }
docs: Extracts the text from the given element.
  Element.getTextContet() is java5 specific, so we need to use this until we drop 1.4 support.