Question

I have the following XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<details>
  ...
  <address1>Test&amp;Address</address1>
  ...
</details>

When I try to unmarshal it using JAXB, it throws the following exception:

Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The reference to entity "Address" must end with the ';' delimiter.
        at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.fatalError(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLScanner.reportFatalError(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanEntityReference(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal0(UnmarshallerImpl.java:194)

But when I changed the & in the XML to ', it works. Looks like the problem is only with ampersand & and I cannot understand why.

The code to unmarshal is:

JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance("some.package.name", this.getClass().getClassLoader());
Unmarshaller unmarshaller = context.createUnmarshaller();
obj = unmarshaller.unmarshal(new StringReader(xml));

Anyone have some insight?

EDIT: I tried the solution suggested by @abhin4v below (ie, add a space after &), but it doesn’t seem to work too. Here’s the stacktrace:

Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference.
        at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.fatalError(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLScanner.reportFatalError(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanEntityReference(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal0(UnmarshallerImpl.java:194)

Answer 1

It turns out that the problem is because of the framework I’m using (Mentawai framework). The said XML comes from the POST body of an HTTP request.

Apparently, the framework converts the character entities in the XML body, therefore, & becomes & and the unmarshaller fails to unmarshal the XML.