problem in XML parser when a extra quote

Question

I have written a xml parser which successfully parses a xml file which is given as input.But sometime the input file that is given to may parser has double quote in a text property because of which my parser crashes.

Eg

<tag  myprop=" this has a extra quote here like " some times" >  </tag>

I know the tag that may /may not have the extra quote.I use a dom parser.

How can i handle this situation?

Answer 1

see XML 1.0 specification, section 2.4:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#attdecls

To allow attribute values to contain both single and double quotes, the apostrophe or single-quote character (') may be represented as " &apos ; ", and the double-quote character (") as "&quot ;"."

so, since it's not valid XML your parser shouldn't be trying to handle the invalid value, it just needs to give an error.

Answer 2

You won't be able to use an XML parser until you have actual XML. What you currently have is invalid (ie not XML). You should escape the quote-mark inside the attribute beforehand.

The escaped code would look like:

<tag  myprop=" this has a extra quote here like &quot; some times" >  </tag>

As to why your parser crashes, well there are dozens of XML libraries in existence - have you looked at any of those? I would personally expect to receive a ParseException or something like that.

Answer 3

You can not. That is not a valid XML, so the DOM parser will fail to parse.

Answer 4

I don't know for sure, but I think it's just invalid XML and so your parser should fail gracefully (rather than crashing) but I don't think it should successfully parse such a file.