XMLValidate Task

XMLValidate

Description

This task checks XML files are valid (or only well formed). The task uses the SAX2 parser implementation provided by JAXP by default (usually the one that is used by Ant itself), but one can specify any SAX1/2 parser if needed. Ant ships with Xerces, which is also what is built in to Java 1.4: XML parsers built into the runtime override Ant's choice.

This task supports the use of nested

<xmlcatalog> elements

<dtd> elements which are used to resolve DTDs and other entities.

<feature> elements which are used to set features. These can be any number of http://xml.org/sax/features/

Parameters

Attribute	Description	Required
file	the file(s) you want to check. (optionally can use an embedded fileset)	No
lenient	if true, only check the xml document is well formed (ignored if the specified parser is as SAX1 parser)	No
classname	the parser to use.	No
classpathref	where to find the parser class. Optionally can use an embedded classpath element.	No
failonerror	fails on a error if set to true (defaults to true).	No
warn	log parser warn events.	No

Nested Elements

dtd

<dtd> is used to specify different locations for DTD and entity resolution.

Attribute	Description	Required
publicId	Public ID of the DTD to resolve	Yes
location	Location of the DTD to use, which can be a file, a resource, or a URL	Yes

xmlcatalog

The xmlcatalog element is used to perform Entity resolution.

feature

The feature element is used to set SAX Parser features. A feature essentialy changes the mode of the parser. There can be an arbitrary amount of features set as defined here: http://xml.org/sax/features/

Examples

<xmlvalidate file="toto.xml"/>

<xmlvalidate failonerror="no" lenient="yes" warn="yes"
             classname="org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser">
             classpath="lib/xerces.jar">
  <fileset dir="src" includes="style/*.xsl"/>
</xmlvalidate>

Validate all .xsl files in src/style, but only warn if there is an error, rather than halt the build.

<xmlvalidate file="struts-config.xml" warn="false">
  <dtd publicId="-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 1.0//EN"
       location="struts-config_1_0.dtd"/>
</xmlvalidate>

Validate a struts configuration, using a local copy of the DTD.


<xmlvalidate failonerror="no">
  <fileset dir="${project.dir}" includes="**/*.xml"/>
  <xmlcatalog refid="mycatalog"/>
</xmlvalidate>

Scan all XML files in the project, using a predefined catalog to map URIs to local files.


<xmlvalidate failonerror="no">
  <fileset dir="${project.dir}" includes="**/*.xml"/>
  <xmlcatalog>
       <dtd
         publicId="-//ArielPartners//DTD XML Article V1.0//EN"
         location="com/arielpartners/knowledgebase/dtd/article.dtd"/>
  </xmlcatalog>
</xmlvalidate>

Scan all XML files in the project, using the catalog defined inline.


<xmlvalidate failonerror="yes" lenient="no" warn="yes">

  <fileset dir="xml" includes="**/*.xml"/>
  <feature name="http://xml.org/sax/features/validation" value="true"/>
  <feature name="http://apache.org/xml/features/validation/schema"  value="true"/>

</xmlvalidate>

Validate the XML files using XML Schema validation.