How to resolve local entity declarations?

Question

hi,
I have an xml instance document that starts<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE ROOTELEMENT SYSTEM 'http://www.farming.com/warhorse/warhorse.dtd' [
    <!ENTITY R "Romance">
    <!ENTITY WAR "War">
    <!ENTITY COM "Comedy">
    <!ENTITY SF "Science Fiction">
    <!ENTITY ACT "Action">
]> does anyone know how to intercept the values like "Romance" "War" "Comedy" and replace them before they are substituted? EntityResolver seems very close but doesn't report these Entitys (!!!)
the parsing code i'm playing with is import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.util.*;
import org.xml.sax.*;
import org.xml.sax.ext.*;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import javax.xml.transform.sax.*;
class SAXTest {
    static class CustomResolver implements EntityResolver {
        public InputSource resolveEntity (String publicId, String systemId) {
            StringReader strReader = new StringReader("This is a custom entity");
            System.out.println("HELLO: "+publicId+"#"+systemId);
            return null;
    static class MyDTDHandler implements DTDHandler {
        public void notationDecl(String name, String publicId, String systemId) throws SAXException {
            System.out.println("nD("+name+", "+publicId+", "+systemId);
        public void unparsedEntityDecl(String name, String publicId, String systemId, String notationName) throws SAXException {
            System.out.println("unparsedEntityDecl("+name+", "+publicId+", "+systemId+", "+notationName);
    private boolean validating;
    private XMLReader xmlReader;
    public static void main(String[]arg) throws Exception {
        XMLReader xmlReader = XMLReaderFactory.createXMLReader(); //"com.sun.org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser");    
        xmlReader.setEntityResolver(new CustomResolver());
        xmlReader.setDTDHandler(new MyDTDHandler());
        System.out.println(xmlReader.getClass().getName());
        // http://sax.sourceforge.net/?selected=get-set
        xmlReader.setProperty("http://xml.org/sax/properties/declaration-handler", new DeclHandler() {
            public void attributeDecl(java.lang.String eName, java.lang.String aName, java.lang.String type, java.lang.String mode, java.lang.String value) {}
            public void elementDecl(java.lang.String name, java.lang.String model) {}
            public void externalEntityDecl(java.lang.String name, java.lang.String publicId, java.lang.String systemId) {
                System.out.println("3");
            public void internalEntityDecl(java.lang.String name, java.lang.String value) {
                System.out.println(name+" "+value);
        xmlReader.setFeature("http://apache.org/xml/features/validation/schema", true);
        xmlReader.setFeature("http://apache.org/xml/features/validation/dynamic", true);
        FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(arg[0]);
        xmlReader.parse(new InputSource(fis));
}running the above code on the above file gives this outputy:\java\misc>java SAXTest Y:\i2work\test\collect\sourceVRTEntity\partlist.xml
com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.SAXParser
R Romance
WAR War
COM Comedy
SF Science Fiction
ACT Action
HELLO: null#http://www.farming.com/warhorse/warhorse.dtd which shows only the DOCTYPE reference is actually going through EntityResolver - the other stuff that goes through DeclHandler is useless as the API doesn't give a chance to resolve their values to something different
thanks,
asjf

Answer 1

Perhaps implementing org.xml.sax.ext.LexicalHandler and using the startEntity and endEntity methods?
TransformerHandler is a subinterface of that so if you're already using a TransformerHandler you're
halfway there to trying that.thanks - it sounds like TransformerHandler is for doing XSLT style processing? I've not yet found much documentation on this but will have a look further into it..
I'm assuming i've configured something wrong atm since i'm sure it should work :)
ie
A) instance document contains general external entities
B) SAX documentation say EntityResolver should report any general external entities
but
C) some general external entities are not being reported.. !
ANT seems to be able to do some things with locally declared entities, so i've downloaded the sources and am about to have a rummage through them..
eg an this ant file works - I don't know if this indicates the references are truly going through an EntityResolver tho.. <!DOCTYPE project [
    <!ENTITY semisemisemi "&semi;&semi;&semi;">
    <!ENTITY semi ";">
]>
<project name="entity_test" default="go">
    <target name="go">
        <echo message="&semisemisemi;"/>
    </target>
</project>asjf