Hi,

When i try to parse an xml file, its giving the following SAXParserException:

The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference.

The xml is as below :

<Request>
 ...
 <OfficeName>Johnson & Johnson</OfficeName>
..
</Request>

This xml is generated from an external program. So while validating this xml, using my xsd i am getting the above mentioned exception.

The corresponding schema part is as below:

<xs:element name="OfficeName">
  <xs:simpleType>
    <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            <xs:maxLength value="32"/>
    </xs:restriction>
   </xs:simpleType>
/xs:element>

Please help me to resolve this issue. Thanks in advance for your help.

& has to be written as an entity : &amp; instead of &

Hi,

As this input xml is generated from external program, I just have to do validation and not any modification to the incoming xml. So here how to overcome this exception?

No way... This XML document is not valid !

How are you saying the xml doc. as invalid.In real time, it is possible to receive the '&' symbol in xml, as many oraganization's name having that. So in these kind of situation, there should be some way to handle this.

XML is a notation with principles : & has to be written &amp; or has to be protected within a CDATA section. If so, & can be present in text data.

The external program you are talking of is not good for representing & the way it has to be...

Ok..Here, <OfficeName> node contains the value "Johnson & Johnson", which is a text value. So in order to accept '&' also in value of that node, how I have to write my schema

Since "Johnson & Johnson" is not written "Johnson &amp; Johnson" in the XML document, this document is not valid, it can't be parsed and, so, no schema can be checked.

The XML document has to be modified !!!

& in XML must always be written &amp;

You need to fix the program that is generating this. It's a great idea for programs to generate output in XML, because so much software can accept XML. But if they generate stuff that isn't XML, it rather destroys the point.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

>As this input xml is generated

Please don't refer to it as XML. It isn't. You must either fix the program so it generates XML, or you must convert its non-XML output to XML. It would be much better to fix it, so you can share in the benefits that come from using XML for data interchange rather than using proprietary non-standard formats.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference