Capture byte number/offset for SAXParser

Question

Like in this question I am trying to record the exact position when parsing XML.

I already use the SAX Locator passed to setDocumentLocator() to record the line and column number but that doesn't give the offset from the beginning of the file. Is there a way to find the number of bytes read so far by the SAX parser or offset of each line without re-reading the whole file?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 14 '11 at 14:01

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Hypothetically, you can use the CountingInputStream from Apache commons IO.

answered Apr 14 '11 at 14:01

Dmitry Negoda

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Thanks. The input stream cannot be accessed from within my DefaultHandler descendent, right? That means I'll need to retain some other reference to it..? – clockworkgeek Apr 14 '11 at 14:09
This is a good answer but CountingInputStream isn't reliable enough. – clockworkgeek Apr 14 '11 at 20:09

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

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I found another question and answer which suggests using an XMLStreamReader instead of SAXParser because it has getLocation().getCharacterOffset() instead. It already has exactly what I need.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

Community

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answered Apr 14 '11 at 20:12

clockworkgeek

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This is not correct.This way you get CHARACTER offset not BYTE offset. If your XML file contains at least one double byte character then you are in big trouble. – Karol Król Nov 21 '14 at 15:09
Please consider to take a look at this question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43366566 – jschnasse May 16 '17 at 15:14

Capture byte number/offset for SAXParser

2 Answers2