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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-22T02:37:36+00:00

I’ve been given an xml string which I need to put through a parser.

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I’ve been given an xml string which I need to put through a parser. Its currently complaining because of an illegal xml character. Very simplified example:

<someXml>this & that</someXml>

I know that the solution is to replace & with &amp;, but I’m not generating the XML and therefore have no control over the values.

A simple string replace is not the right way to to this since the ‘&’ has special meaning in XML and a global replace of ‘&’ with ‘&amp;’ would ruin the special meaning which was intended. Is there a solution to take a full xml document and ‘fix’ it so that ‘&’ become ‘&amp;’, but only where intended? Am I safe to globally replace ‘ & ‘ with ‘ &amp; ‘ (note the spaces on either side)?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think this an interesting question, because it’s a situation that may really happen in real-life. Although I believe that the right thing to do is asking the XML provider to fix the XML and make it valid, I thought one option was trying with a lenient parser. I did some search and I found this blog post talking about this same problem, and suggesting the same solution that I was think of. You may try with jsoup. Let me repeat that I think this is not the best thing to do: you should really ask the XML provider to fix it.

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