Question

I’m using the following method to read in a line of text from an XML document via the web:

public static String getCharacterDataFromElement(Element e) {
    Node child = ((Node) e).getFirstChild();
    if (child instanceof CharacterData) {
        CharacterData cd = (CharacterData) child;
        return cd.getData();
    }
    return "";
}

It works fine, but if it comes across a character such as an ampersand which are not written like & etc it will then completely ignore that character and the rest of the line. What can I do to rectify this?

Answer 1

The only proper solution ist to correct the XML, so that the & is written as &, or the texts are wrapped in <![CDATA[ … ]]>.

It’s not actually XML unless you escape ampersands or use CDATA.