Parse invalid XML

Parsing invalid XML involves a combination of corrective actions and flexible parsing techniques. One common approach is to use a lenient XML parser that can tolerate errors and retrieve information despite the malformed structure.

Corrective Actions:

Before parsing, consider pre-processing the XML to correct common errors. Tools like Tidy or Jsoup can help in cleaning and repairing XML documents.

Step-by-Step Implementation

Let’s walk through a step-by-step example of parsing invalid XML.

Step 1: Define Invalid XML

<root>
    <element>Value</element>
    <element>UnclosedTag
</root>

Step 2: Use Lenient Parser

• Create a DOMParser instance.
• Set the parser to be lenient using parser.setFeature().
• Parse the invalid XML using parser.parse().

Parsing invalid or not well-formed XML can be a necessity when dealing with data from diverse sources. While standard XML parsers expect well-formed XML, there are strategies and techniques to handle and extract information from malformed XML documents.

In this article, we will explore how to parse such invalid XML using Java.