SAX parser and DTD validation

[Vepo]

I'm trying to parse an XML-document and validate it against DTD.
If I got it right, I have to do it like this:
....
InputSourse is = new InputSource(...);
is.setSystemId("location of the dtd"
xmlParser.parse(is);

But despite of the form of the DTD-file I get following error:
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: External parameter entity "%[dtd];" has characters after markup.

I tried to find out what that error means, but only found one page:

http://www.xml.com/1999/09/conformance/reports/report-sun-nv.html

and that didn't offer much help

I would be pleased of any help...

 

[chiph]

To use SAX, you must implement it's interfaces. At the top of your .cls module, put this:
[tt]
Implements IVBSAXContentHandler
Implements IVBSAXErrorHandler
[/tt]
And then you implement the functions that you need. Typically this will only be:
[tt]
IVBSAXContentHandler_startDocument
IVBSAXContentHandler_startElement
IVBSAXContentHandler_characters
IVBSAXContentHandler_endElement
IVBSAXErrorHandler_error
IVBSAXErrorHandler_fatalError
IVBSAXErrorHandler_ignorableWarning
[/tt]

To get the SAX parser going, you create a method in your class, and add code like:
[tt]
Dim objSAX As SAXXMLReader30
Set objSAX = New SAXXMLReader30
Set objSAX.contentHandler = Me 'This class handles content
Set objSAX.errorHandler = Me 'This class also handles errors

Call objSAX.parseURL("file:///" & ImportFilename)
[/tt]

There are a few problems with Microsoft's SAX implementation -- It tends to "fatalerror" a lot on accented characters. Also, any strange characters will also cause it to raise errors. Some of these can be gotten around by specifying the ISO-8859-1 character set encoding in your source XML file, but not all.

In order to validate this against a DTD, you will need to put code in the EndElement event to something like:
[tt]
Set objDom = New MSXML2.DOMDocument30

' Prepend the DTD to the node
If objDom.loadXML(m_sDTDDefinition & m_sCurrentNode) Then

[tab]' Validate the node against the DTD
[tab]Set objParseError = objDom.Validate
[tab]If objParseError.errorCode = 0 Then
[tab][tab]' Passed validation
[/tt]

Hope this helps.
Chip H.

 

[Vepo]

Thanks Chip,
but it was my fault that I didn't mention that I'm using java.
So let me clarify the situation, infact the parser if JAXP1.1 which includes org.w3c.dom and org.xml.sax packages.

I can set the validation on by using SAXParserFactory's method setValidating(true);

The problem occurs when I try to define external DTD with
setSystemId(location of dtd) -method.
Because if your xml-file uses dtd and you are using validation, that must be done...

Any ideas?

But thanks anyway for your trouble, Chip

 

[chiph]

Ooops. Sorry, I didn't notice that you were using Java.

Unfortunately I'm not that good in Java (I can handle the basics), and haven't done XML in Java. But as a suggestion, what happens if you reverse the order of the calls -- call setSystemId() before setValidating(true)?

Chip H.