Is there a Java XML API that can parse a document without resolving character entities?

Question

I have program that needs to parse XML that contains character entities. The program itself doesn\'t need to have them resolved, and the list of them is large and will chan

Answer 1

The STaX API has support for the notion of not replacing character entity references, by way of the IS_REPLACING_ENTITY_REFERENCES property:

Requires the parser to replace internal entity references with their replacement text and report them as characters

This can be set into an XmlInputFactory, which is then in turn used to construct an XmlEventReader or XmlStreamReader. However, the API is careful to say that this property is only intended to force the implementation to perform the replacement, rather than forcing it to not replace them. Still, it's got to be worth a try.

Answer 2

A SAX parse with an org.xml.sax.EntityResolver might suit your purpose. You could for sure suppress them, and you could probably find a way to leave them unresolved.

This tutorial seems the most relevant: it shows how to resolve entities into strings.

Answer 3

I am not a Java developer, but I "think" Java xml classes support a similar functionality to .net for accomplishing this. IN .net the xmlreadersettings class you set the ProhibitDtd property false and set the XmlResolver property to null. This will cause the parser to ignore externally referenced entities without throwing an exception when they are read. I just did a google search for "Java ignore enity" and got lots of hits, some of which appear to address this topic. I realize this is not a total answer to your question but it should point you in a useful direction.

Answer 4

Works for me only when disabling support of external entities:

XMLInputFactory inputFactory = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
inputFactory.setProperty(XMLInputFactory.IS_REPLACING_ENTITY_REFERENCES, false);
inputFactory.setProperty(XMLInputFactory.IS_SUPPORTING_EXTERNAL_ENTITIES, false);