Exception:java.io.UTFDataFormatException: invalid byte 2 of 2-byte UTF-8 se

Question

While feeding the parser with the xml string returned , the present data found contains some invalid UTF-8 characters(e.g, "�"). This would amount to a "java.io.UTFDataFormatException" exception.
This is the code where I initialize the parser & feed the InputSource:
public class ISEGeneralSearchResultsParser extends DefaultHandler{
private static final String DEFAULT_PARSER_NAME     = "org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser";
private static final String VALIDATION               = "http://xml.org/sax/features/validation";
private static final String NAMESPACE               = "http://xml.org/sax/features/namespaces";
private static final String SCHEMA                    = "http://apache.org/xml/features/validation/schema";
protected static boolean cbSetValidation           = false;
protected static boolean cbSetNameSpaces           = false;
protected static boolean cbSetSchemaSupport           = false;
public void toRecord(String asXML)
          throws Exception
          try
               ByteArrayInputStream byteStream = new ByteArrayInputStream(asXML.getBytes());
               String lsParserName = DEFAULT_PARSER_NAME;          
               try
                    lParser = (XMLReader)Class.forName(lsParserName).newInstance();
                    lParser.setFeature( VALIDATION, cbSetValidation);
     lParser.setFeature( NAMESPACE, cbSetNameSpaces);
     lParser.setFeature( SCHEMA, cbSetSchemaSupport);
     lParser.setContentHandler((DefaultHandler)this);
     lParser.setErrorHandler((DefaultHandler)this);
               catch(Exception parserException)
                    throw new SNETException("ISE011");
               lParser.parse(new InputSource((InputStream)byteStream));
          catch (Exception xmlStringException)
               throw new SNETException("ISE012");
My question how would I make the parser understand that the characters allowed could be also � for example?
Thanking you in anitcipation!!
Cheers

Answer 1

My question how would I make the parser understand
that the characters allowed could be also � for
example?You would give it an XML file that declares its encoding properly. If it doesn't declare its encoding at all, you'd make sure it was really encoded in UTF-8. Hint: just stating an encoding in the XML's prologue doesn't mean that the data is really encoded that way. That's the responsibility of the creator of the file.