How to set the Xml Encoding ISO-8859-1 to Transformer or DOMSource

Question

I have a xml string and it already contains an xml declaration with encoding="ISO-8859-1". (In my real product, since some of the element/attribute value contains a Spanish character, I need to use this encoding instead of UTF-8.) Also, in my program, I need to add more attributes or manipulate the xml string dynamically, so I create a DOM Document object for that. And, then, I use Transformer to convert this Document to a stream.
My problme is: Firstly, once converted through the Transformer, the xml encoding changed to default UTF-8, Secondly, I wanted to check whether the DOM Document created with the xml string maintains the Xml Encoding of ISO-8859-1 or not. So, I called Document.getXmlEncoding(), but it is throwing a runtime error - unknown method.
Is there any way I can maintain the original Xml Encoding of ISO-8859-1 when I use either the DOMSource or Transformer? I am using JDK1.5.0-12.
Following is my sample program you can use.
I would appreciate any help, because so far, I cannot find any answer to this using the JDK documentation at all.
Thanks,
Jin Kim
import java.io.*;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.w3c.dom.Attr;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.Templates;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
public class XmlEncodingTest
    StringBuffer xmlStrBuf = new StringBuffer();
    TransformerFactory tFactory = null;
    Transformer transformer = null;
    Document document = null;
    public void performTest()
        xmlStrBuf.append("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"iso-8859-1\"?>\n")
                 .append("<TESTXML>\n")
                 .append("<ELEM ATT1=\"Yes\" />\n")
                 .append("</TESTXML>\n");
        // the encoding is set to iso-8859-1 in the xml declaration.
        System.out.println("initial xml = \n" + xmlStrBuf.toString());
        try
            //Test1: Use the transformer to ouput the xmlStrBuf.
            // This shows the xml encoding result from the transformer which will change to UTF-8
            tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
            transformer = tFactory.newTransformer();
            StreamSource ss = new StreamSource( new StringBufferInputStream( xmlStrBuf.toString()));
            System.out.println("Test1 result = ");
            transformer.transform( ss, new StreamResult(System.out));
            //Test2: Create a DOM document object for xmlStrBuf and manipulate it by adding an attribute ATT2="No"
            DocumentBuilderFactory dfactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
            DocumentBuilder builder = dfactory.newDocumentBuilder();
            document = builder.parse( new StringBufferInputStream( xmlStrBuf.toString()));
            // skip adding attribute since it does not affect the test result
            // Use a Transformer to output the DOM document. the encoding becomes UTF-8
            DOMSource source = new DOMSource(document);
            StreamResult result = new StreamResult(System.out);
            System.out.println("\n\nTest2 result = ");
            transformer.transform(source, result);
        catch (Exception e)
            System.out.println("<performTest> Exception caught. " + e.toString());
    public static void main( String arg[])
        XmlEncodingTest xmlTest = new XmlEncodingTest();
        xmlTest.performTest();
}

Answer 1

Thanks DrClap for your answer. With your information, I rewrote the sample program as in the following, and it works well now as I intended! About the UTF-8 and Spanish charaters, I think you are right. It looks like there can be many factors involved on this subject though - for example, the real character sets used to create an xml document, and the xml encoding information declared will matter. The special character I had a trouble was u00F3, and somehow, I found out that Sax Parser or even Document Builder parser does not like this character when encoding is set to "UTF-8" in the Xml document. My sample program below may not be a perfect example, but if you replaces ISO-8859-1 with UTF-8, and not setting the encoding property to the transfermer, you may notice that the special character in my example is broken in Test1 and Test2. In my sample, I decided to use ByteArrayInputStream instead of StringBufferInpuptStream because the documentation says StringBufferInputStream may have a problem with converting characters into bytes.
Thanks again for your help!
Jin Kim
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.w3c.dom.Attr;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.Templates;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
* XML encoding test for Transformer
public class XmlEncodingTest2
    StringBuffer xmlStrBuf = new StringBuffer();
    TransformerFactory tFactory = null;
    Document document = null;
    public void performTest()
        xmlStrBuf.append("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"iso-8859-1\"?>\n")
                 .append("<TESTXML>\n")
                 .append("<ELEM ATT1=\"Resoluci�n\">\n")
                 .append("Special charatered attribute test")
                 .append("\n</ELEM>")
                 .append("\n</TESTXML>\n");
        // the encoding is set to iso-8859-1 in the xml declaration.
        System.out.println("**** Initial xml = \n" + xmlStrBuf.toString());
        try
            //TransformerFactoryImpl transformerFactory = new TransformerFactoryImpl();
            //Test1: Use the transformer to ouput the xmlStrBuf.
            tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
            Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer();
            byte xmlbytes[] = xmlStrBuf.toString().getBytes("ISO-8859-1");
            StreamSource streamSource = new StreamSource( new ByteArrayInputStream( xmlbytes ));
            ByteArrayOutputStream xmlBaos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            Properties transProperties = transformer.getOutputProperties();
            transProperties.list( System.out); // prints out current transformer properties
            System.out.println("**** setting the transformer's encoding property to ISO-8859-1.");
            transformer.setOutputProperty("encoding", "ISO-8859-1");
            transformer.transform( streamSource, new StreamResult( xmlBaos));
            System.out.println("**** Test1 result = ");
            System.out.println(xmlBaos.toString("ISO-8859-1"));
            //Test2: Create a DOM document object for xmlStrBuf to add a new attribute ATT2="No"
            DocumentBuilderFactory dfactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
            DocumentBuilder builder = dfactory.newDocumentBuilder();
            document = builder.parse( new ByteArrayInputStream( xmlbytes));
            // skip adding attribute since it does not affect the test result
            // Use a Transformer to output the DOM document.
            DOMSource source = new DOMSource(document);
            xmlBaos.reset();
            transformer.transform( source, new StreamResult( xmlBaos));
            System.out.println("\n\n****Test2 result = ");
            System.out.println(xmlBaos.toString("ISO-8859-1"));
            //xmlBaos.flush();
            //xmlBaos.close();
        catch (Exception e)
            System.out.println("<performTest> Exception caught. " + e.toString());
        finally
    public static void main( String arg[])
        XmlEncodingTest2 xmlTest = new XmlEncodingTest2();
        xmlTest.performTest();
}