Problems parsing XML if an "&" occurs

[Mark Mescher]

Hi out there,
I need to parse an xmlstream. I am using the Documentbuilderfactory for this and normaly all works fine. In some Tags sometimes a "&" occurs. I do not have the possibility to encode this data before creating the xmlstream. If the parser finds this symbol it throws a sax-parser-exception. Is there any way to parse this symbol without encoding it in the right way?
Thx.
Bye
Mark

[Pradeep Kadambar]

As far as I know unless you convert the value you insert in the xml into UTF-8 encoding the SAX parser will fail to validate the xml.

Try if possible to convert the value you write to UTF-8 format.

:roll:

[Arun Prasath]

SAX Parser or any parser can only parse Well-formed XMLs.
If any XMLs contain any & inside the element, then it is not a well-formed xml. Ideally it should be replaced with &
You need to check for wellformedness of xml and then parse.

[Mark Mescher]

The problem is that the xml isnt generated by me but by another software. So I am not able to encode the "&" before parsing. I could convert the stream to a string and replace all "&" by the correct encoding and after that run the parser. But isnt there an easier way?
Bye
Mark

[Horatio Westock]

You could tell the vendor of the other software that they are producing invalid XML, and ask them to patch their software.

In the meantime, you could write a stream filter that seaches for and replaces the invalid characters before they reach the xml parser.

[Mark Mescher]

Yes I think I have to do this. Seems without a filter this will not work.
OK thanky for your helpfull replies!
Bye
Mark

[Mark Mescher]

Hi once more:-)
A little question: What is the correct UTF-8 encoding of &? Is there a easy way to encode a complete String to UTF-8?
Bye
Mark

[Rene Larsen]

You could also try the use of 'CDATA' in your elements - or convert '&' into '& amp;' (without the space)

<xmlElement>
    <![CDATA[
      I am > the rules! 
    ]]>
</xmlElement>

Rene
[ March 21, 2005: Message edited by: Rene Larsen ]

[Mark Mescher]

Hi,
the cdata[[ works (I can define the xml-strucute in the thirdparty software but not the containing data)! So I dont have to encode manually.
Thx a lot!
Mark