XML - Cannot find the declaration of the element ....

[Roger F. Gay]

I set up an XML file reader that validates using schema, then wanted to add some simple xml files to my application that do not have schema. I seem to be having difficulty turning schema checking off completely. I keep getting an error that says "Cannot find the declaration of the element 'plan'." I've been googling on this for some time, and everything I've found talks about a schema validation error.

Here's a sample xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<plan>
 <step name="step1">
  <item>rightdoor</item>
 </step>
 <step name="step2">
  <item>go_in</item>
 </step>
</plan>

Here's the code I've been trying to get to work with it.

  public Document getXML (String filename, Boolean validate) {

    try {

      File file = new File(new File(new File("." + File.separator + "configs").getCanonicalPath()) + File.separator + filename);
      DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();

 if (validate) {
      dbf.setNamespaceAware(true);
      dbf.setValidating(true);
      try {
       dbf.setAttribute(JAXP_SCHEMA_LANGUAGE, W3C_XML_SCHEMA);
      } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
        System.err.println("XMLFileReader:getXML: " + e);
      }
 } else {

      dbf.setNamespaceAware(false);
      dbf.setValidating(false);

 }
      DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
      if (validate) db.setErrorHandler(new HLLDOMErrorHandler());
      Document document = db.parse(file);
      return (document);

    } catch (IOException e) {
      System.err.println("XMLFileReader:getXML: " + e);
    } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
      System.err.println("XMLFileReader:getXML: " + e);
    } catch (SAXException e) {
      System.err.println("XMLFileReader:getXML: " + e);
    }
    return (null);
  }