Getting the Value of an Entity Reference in a DOM Document

The value of an entity reference is kept in the child nodes of the EntityReference node. This example demonstrates an entity reference with three children.

Note: By default, a parser expands entity references while constructing the DOM tree. See Preventing Expansion of Entity References While Parsing an XML File to prevent expansion.

// Obtain a document; the following method is implemented in // Preventing Expansion of Entity References While Parsing an XML File Document doc = parseXmlFileNoExpandER("infilename.xml", false); // Get the entity reference (see input file) Element root = doc.getDocumentElement(); EntityReference eref = (EntityReference)root.getFirstChild(); // The first child of the entity reference is comment Comment comment = (Comment)eref.getFirstChild(); // comment // The second child of the entity reference is an element Element elem = (Element)eref.getFirstChild().getNextSibling(); // <i> // The third child of the entity reference is a text Text text = (Text)eref.getLastChild(); // text
This is the sample input for the example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE root [ <!ENTITY entity "<!--comment--><i/>text"> ]> <root>&entity;</root>

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