Referring to a local DTD in Java

Question

I have some XML that I'm parsing with a SAX parser in Java. It starts with this preamble:

<!DOCTYPE math 
    PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD MathML 3.0//EN"
           "http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/mathml3/mathml3.dtd">

How do I change this to use a local DTD?

I suppose I could do something like this:

<!DOCTYPE math 
    PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD MathML 3.0//EN"
           "file:///c:/MathML/mathml3.dtd">

Not exactly like that, but something like that. However, I need the path to be independent of the user's system.

How do I use a local DTD with a path relative to the class path?

Possibly useful to look at this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/243728/how-to-disable-dtd-at-runtime-in-javas-xpath — , Jun 13 '11 at 14:37
Another possibility is to use an XML Catalog that resolves the doctype to a local file without changing the XML. This pushes the change to a parameter to the parser invocation. — Jim Garrison, Jun 13 '11 at 14:38

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 10 '14 at 09:07

7

When dealing with Web Apps, you can put the dtd in the lib folder and refer to it like:

<!DOCTYPE name PUBLIC 
    "-//CMP//DTD dtdName 1.0//EN"
        "/WEB-INF/lib/dtdName.dtd">

answered Jun 10 '14 at 09:07

Sully

this is simpler than the first answer !! Thanks Hitham – mounaim Apr 23 '15 at 09:38
1

I posted the answer as a web app solution and not for simplicity – Sully Sep 05 '17 at 21:57
lib folder should contain "only" libraries. – Mehdi Oct 26 '18 at 17:43
@Mehdi, DTDs are usually inside JARs, which are in the lib folder. You just have to reference them differently as `jar:file: /log4j.jar!/org/apache/log4j/xml/log4j.dtd` – Sully Oct 28 '18 at 19:07
Didn't know you can reference a dtd inside a jar, but it's a file appart, why not to place it in a path like conf/dtd and keep the lib folder for jars as possible. – Mehdi Oct 29 '18 at 02:54
I had to use a relative path "./lib/dtdName.dtd". Using Windows + Eclipse + Jboss. – luca.vercelli Sep 19 '22 at 08:30
For reference, I solved a build issue by updating the malfunctioning xml with – Vivin Feb 28 '23 at 11:02

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 28 '16 at 07:42

4

The solution is to provide the DTD file location in the system using classpath. So the DocType that worked offline would be:

<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration SYSTEM 
    "classpath://org/hibernate/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd">

answered Jul 28 '16 at 07:42

alok

This works only with special [org.hibernate.util.DTDEntityResolver](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10886453/hibernate-issue-with-using-http-www-hibernate-org-dtd). – Vadzim Feb 28 '17 at 18:14
java.net.MalformedURLException: unknown protocol: classpath I am getting this exception – Jerry May 29 '18 at 09:10

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 13 '11 at 14:46

Take a look at this article on using XML catalogs to resolve DTDs locally without having to modify your XML source. The basic steps are:

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 22 '15 at 12:33

0

Also another way can be to keep the dtd at the localhost so that the final path becomes something like:

<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration SYSTEM 
          "http://localhost/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd">

Definitely not the most elegant solution but surely does work.

answered May 22 '15 at 12:33

Puneet Akhouri

Hacky but works, don't forget the port number if you have one (localhost:8080) – Mo Beigi Sep 06 '16 at 03:44

4 Answers4