resolving an entity

[Dean A. Hoover]

I am writing a parser for xml that will not have
an associated DTD. I want to be able to handle
certain character references (e.g., &copy in
the program.

When I run the following against a chunk of xml
containing ©, I get the following:

org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Reference to undefined entity "©". at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.fatal(Parser2.java:3182) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.fatal(Parser2.java:3176) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.expandEntityInContent(Parser2.java:2513) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.maybeReferenceInContent(Parser2.java:2422) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.content(Parser2.java:1833) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.maybeElement(Parser2.java:1507) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.content(Parser2.java:1779) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.maybeElement(Parser2.java:1507) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.content(Parser2.java:1779) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.maybeElement(Parser2.java:1507) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.parseInternal(Parser2.java:500) at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.parse(Parser2.java:305) at org.apache.crimson.parser.XMLReaderImpl.parse(XMLReaderImpl.java:442) at javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser.parse(SAXParser.java:345) at javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser.parse(SAXParser.java:281) at Article.main(Article.java:18)

What can I do to catch these references in my code and output replacement text for it?

Thanks.
Dean Hoover

Here's the two java files:
---
import java.io.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import org.xml.sax.*;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.*;

public class Article
{
public static void main(String argv)
{
String file = argv[0];
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(System.out);
DefaultHandler handler = new LoadXML(pw, LoadXML.TYPE_HTML); SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance;

try
{
SAXParser reader = factory.newSAXParser;
reader.parse(new File(file), handler);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace;
return;
}

pw.flush;
}
}
---
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import org.xml.sax.*;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.*;

public class LoadXML extends DefaultHandler
{
public static final int TYPE_HTML = 1;
public static final int TYPE_TEXT = 2;

public LoadXML
(
java.io.Writer writer,
int type
)
{
elements_ = new Stack;
writer_ = writer;
type_ = type;
}

public InputSource resolveEntity
(
String publicId,
String systemId
) throws SAXException
{
String s = "stuff";
return new InputSource(new CharArrayReader(s.toCharArray)); }

public void startDocument throws SAXException
{
}

public void endDocument throws SAXException
{
}

public void startElement
(
String uri,
String localName,
String qName,
Attributes attributes
) throws SAXException
{
String elementName = qName;
elements_.push(elementName);

try
{
if (elementName.equals("p"))
{
if (type_ == TYPE_HTML)
writer_.write("<p class=\"article-text\">");
}
else if (elementName.equals("title"))
{
if (type_ == TYPE_HTML)
writer_.write("<p class=\"article-title\">");
}
else if (elementName.equals("by"))
{
if (type_ == TYPE_HTML)
writer_.write("<p class=\"article-by\">");
}
else if (elementName.equals("copyright"))
{
if (type_ == TYPE_HTML)
writer_.write("<p class=\"article-copyright\">");
}
}
catch (IOException e)
{
throw new SAXException(e);
}
}

public void endElement
(
String uri,
String localName,
String qName
) throws SAXException
{
String elementName = qName;
elements_.pop;

try
{
if (type_ == TYPE_HTML)
{
if (elementName.equals("p") || elementName.equals("title") || elementName.equals("by") || elementName.equals("copyright")) { writer_.write("</p>\n"); } else if (elementName.equals("br")) { writer_.write("<br/>\n"); } } } catch (IOException e) { throw new SAXException(e); } }

public void characters
(
char ch,
int start,
int length
) throws SAXException
{
try
{
String content = new String(ch, start, length);
String top = (String)elements_.peek;
String text =
content.replaceAll("\n", " ").replaceAll(" +", " ").trim;

if (text.length == 0)
return;

if (type_ == TYPE_HTML)
{
if (top.equals("p") || top.equals("title") ||
top.equals("by") || top.equals("copyright"))
writer_.write(text);
}
}
catch (IOException e)
{
throw new SAXException(e);
}
}

private Stack elements_;
private java.io.Writer writer_;
private int type_;
}

 

[Maarten Wiltink]

I am writing a parser for xml that will not have
an associated DTD. I want to be able to handle
certain character references (e.g., &copy in
the program.

As I understand it, that's quite impossible. The case is defined in the spec, and without a DTD you don't get to choose what entities are defined or not.

But DTD may not mean what you think it does. Would it be permissible for this document to have an internal DTD subset?

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE root [ <!ENTITY copy 'copy'> ]>
<root>&copy;</root>

A quick reading of the XML spec suggests (but I may have missed something) that this is a correct construction in XML.

Groetjes,
Maarten Wiltink

 

[Dean A. Hoover]

I am writing a parser for xml that will not have
an associated DTD. I want to be able to handle
certain character references (e.g., &copy in
the program.

As I understand it, that's quite impossible. The case is defined in the spec, and without a DTD you don't get to choose what entities are defined or not.

But DTD may not mean what you think it does. Would it be permissible for this document to have an internal DTD subset?

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE root [ <!ENTITY copy 'copy'> ]>
<root>&copy;</root>

A quick reading of the XML spec suggests (but I may have missed something) that this is a correct construction in XML.

I really don't want any DTD in the document at all. I am writing some code that will parse an xml document and output either html or plain text depending on a parameter. In the case of HTML it would output "&copy;", in the case of plain text it would output "(c)". I have other similar context based entities to handle as well.

Dean

 

[Martin Honnen]

I am writing a parser for xml that will not have
an associated DTD. I want to be able to handle
certain character references (e.g., &copy in
the program.

As I understand it, that's quite impossible. The case is defined in the spec, and without a DTD you don't get to choose what entities are defined or not.

But DTD may not mean what you think it does. Would it be permissible for this document to have an internal DTD subset?

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE root [ <!ENTITY copy 'copy'> ]>
<root>&copy;</root>

A quick reading of the XML spec suggests (but I may have missed something) that this is a correct construction in XML.

I really don't want any DTD in the document at all. I am writing some code that will parse an xml document and output either html or plain text depending on a parameter. In the case of HTML it would output "&copy;", in the case of plain text it would output "(c)". I have other similar context based entities to handle as well.

Well, if you write your own parser then you can of course parse something alike XML but with references to undefined entities. But then don't attempt to parse it with an XML parser which expects entities to be defined.

 

[Maarten Wiltink]

[...]
I really don't want any DTD in the document at all. I am writing some code that will parse an xml document and output either html or plain text depending on a parameter. In the case of HTML it would output "&copy;", in the case of plain text it would output "(c)". I have other similar context based entities to handle as well.

That's reasonable, but entities simply aren't the solution. Would using processing instructions instead be acceptable?

In XSLT, you could even source in the transformation itself with document('') and switch treatment of <?copy?> based on the output method.

I'm working under the assumption that you want the source to be well-formed XML, valid if possible.

Groetjes,
Maarten Wiltink

 

[Richard Tobin]

I am writing a parser for xml that will not have
an associated DTD. I want to be able to handle
certain character references (e.g., &copy in
the program.

Well, this is not *real* XML.

The simplest thing to do would be to read the file into a string and prepend an internal subset that declares the entities in question. This will be easy if you know that there isn't an XML declaration or DOCTYPE declaration in the file and you know the file's encoding. Otherwise it will be more tedious.

-- Richard