Problem with XML <!DOCTYPE

General
1

Hello, I am trying to use XmlReader to parse an XML file. With many other XML files I have had no problems, but a file I have to work with begins as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE mT:stockItems [
    <!ENTITY % autoprintEnt SYSTEM "autoprint.ent">
    %autoprintEnt;
]>
< mT:stockItems xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"

When I try to parse the file, I get an exception: error number 21 at line 4; “error in processing external entity reference”.

Does anyone know if there is a way around this? Suppressing the known errors would be an acceptable solution for this particular project.

My current thinking is to re-write the XML file, line by line, skipping lines 2 through 5, then parsing the new file - but I wondered if there was a more elegant way.

2

I think line 4 should read:

&autoprintEnt;
3

Unfortunately, this is a file that is incoming from a 3rd party, but I could ask them to check. But if I change the ‘%’ to ‘&’ I get different exceptions.

The original XML is legal according to the ‘Check This Document’ feature of my XML editor ‘EditiX’.

4

Try and remove that line and see what happens. It might work that way, so a simple ReplaceAll with empty string might solve all your issues.

5

Yes, removing the lines definitely fixes it and it is what I have been doing to continue development and pretend it is all great.

I guess the remaining question is, should the XmlReader class be triggering exceptions for legitimate XML?