External entity in XML causing null pointer exception during DocumentBuilder.parse

[sri kumar]

I was trying to parse a XML Document using DOM Parser. 

I got null pointer exception while executing doc = builder.parse(xmlDataFile); 

There were few entities in the XML data file. On removing a particular entity, 
i was able to parse the file successfully 

The entity was some thing like this 

<!ENTITY SAMPLE.TIF SYSTEM "SAMPLE.TIF" NDATA TIF> 

What could be the reason? 

EDIT: 

Here is the code: 

        DocumentBuilderFactory aFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); 
        aFactory.setValidating(false); 
        aFactory.setFeature("http://xml.org/sax/features/namespaces";, false); 
        aFactory.setFeature("http://apache.org/xml/features/validation/schema";, 
false); 
        aFactory.setIgnoringComments(true); 
        builder = aFactory.newDocumentBuilder(); 
        doc = builder.parse(xmlDataFile); 
This is the trace: 

 at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom.DeferredDocumentImpl.setChunkIndex(DeferredDocumentImpl.java:1944)
 
    at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom.DeferredDocumentImpl.appendChild(DeferredDocumentImpl.java:644)
 
    at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractDOMParser.characters(AbstractDOMParser.java:1191)
 
    at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.dtd.XMLDTDValidator.characters(XMLDTDValidator.java:862)
 
    at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:463)
    at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:807)
 
    at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:737)
 
    at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:107) 
    at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.DOMParser.parse(DOMParser.java:225) 
    at 
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(DocumentBuilderImpl.java:283)
 
    at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder.parse(DocumentBuilder.java:180) 
    at XMLParser.Parse(XMLParser.java:89) 
    at Main.main(Main.java:116) 


89 line number points to -> doc = builder.parse(xmlDataFile);


i was able to find the workaround  if i add this code

 aFactory.setFeature("http://apache.org/xml/features/dom/defer-node-expansion";, 
false);

the issue is resolved. But i need to know the cause of this problem. Was the 
entity the cause?

Thanks
Sri kumar


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