Question

I inherited an “XML” license file containing no root element, but rather two XML fragments (<XmlCreated> and <Product>) so when I try to parse the file, I (expectantly) get an error about a document that is not-well-formed.

I need to get both the XmlCreated and Product tags.

Sample XML file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<XmlCreated>May 11 2009</XmlCreated>

<!-- License Key file Attributes -->
<Product image ="LicenseKeyFile">

 <!-- MyCompany -->
 <Manufacturer ID="7f">
  <SerialNumber>21072832521007</SerialNumber>
  <ChassisId>72060034465DE1C3</ChassisId>
  <RtspMaxUsers>500</RtspMaxUsers>
  <MaxChannels>8</MaxChannels>
 </Manufacturer>

</Product>

Here is the current code that I use to attempt to load the XML. It does not work, but I’ve used it before as a starting point for well-formed XML.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
        File file = new File("C:\\path\\LicenseFile.xml");
        DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document doc = db.parse(file);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

At the db.parse(file) line, I get the following Exception:

[Fatal Error] LicenseFile.xml:6:2: The markup in the document following the root element must be well-formed.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The markup in the document following the root element must be well-formed.
 at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.DOMParser.parse(Unknown Source)
 at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
 at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder.parse(Unknown Source)
 at com.mycompany.licensesigning.LicenseSigner.main(LicenseSigner.java:20)

How would I go about parsing this frustrating file?

Answer 1

If you know this document is always going to be non-well formed… make it so. Add a new dummy <root> tag after the <?xml...>and </root> after the last of the data.