Invalid characters when consuming web service

Question

Morning all,
I am using Apache Axis 1.3 (yes, slightly old version) to consume a Microsoft SharePoint web service. The problem I am finding is that the returned XML contains an invalid XML character which is causing Axis to throw an exception. I have no control over the SharePoint web service so I am wondering if it is possible to somehow obtain the XML returned from SharePoint so that I can pre-process it, removing all the bad characters, before then letting Axis process as normal. Or perhaps there is a more elegant solution?
This snippet of code shows how I am currently calling the web service :
String endpoint = listSite.endsWith("/") ? listSite + "_vti_bin/Lists.asmx" : listSite + "/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx";
org.apache.axis.client.Service service = new org.apache.axis.client.Service();
org.apache.axis.client.Call call = (org.apache.axis.client.Call) service.createCall();
call.setProperty(Call.SOAPACTION_USE_PROPERTY, new Boolean(true));
call.setProperty(Call.SOAPACTION_URI_PROPERTY, "http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/GetListItems");
call.setSOAPVersion(org.apache.axis.soap.SOAPConstants.SOAP11_CONSTANTS);
call.setOperationName(new javax.xml.namespace.QName("http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/", "GetListItems"));
call.setTargetEndpointAddress(new java.net.URL(endpoint));
call.addParameter(new javax.xml.namespace.QName("http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/", "listName"),
     new javax.xml.namespace.QName("http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema", "string"),
     java.lang.String.class,
     javax.xml.rpc.ParameterMode.IN);
call.addParameter(new javax.xml.namespace.QName("http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/", "rowLimit"),
     new javax.xml.namespace.QName("http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema", "string"),
     javax.xml.rpc.ParameterMode.IN);
call.setUsername(domain + "\\" + user);
call.setPassword(password);
call.setReturnType(org.apache.axis.Constants.XSD_SCHEMA);
Schema schema = (Schema) call.invoke(new Object[]{ listGUID, "100" });The error occurs after the call to the invoke method :
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Character reference "&#11" is an invalid XML characterMany Thanks,
Ben.

Answer 1

You're not going to like this but... get the producer (SharePoint) fixed.
Because if you get invalid XML then yes you'd have to pre-process it, which basically will entail you throwing out Axis and doing it all yourself. Which seems brutal.
Bottom line is that a webservice producing invalid XML is not in fact a webservice.