SAX error parsing by element. need help!

Question

I am trying to develop a small method to that can parse an xml file and return an elements value. I got some code to build a SAXHandler. I have build the SAXHandler and have compiled it no problem.
import java.io.*;
import java.util.Hashtable;
import org.xml.sax.*;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.*;
public class SAXHandler extends DefaultHandler {
private Hashtable table = new Hashtable();
private String currentElement = null;
private String currentValue = null;
public void setTable(Hashtable table) {
this.table = table;
public Hashtable getTable(){
return table;
public void startElement(String tag, Attributes attrs)
throws SAXException {
currentElement = tag;
public void characters(char[] ch, int start, int length)
throws SAXException {
currentValue = new String(ch, start, length);
public void endElement(String name) throws SAXException {
if (currentElement.equals(name)) {
table.put(currentElement, currentValue);
I am using the following code to read the file in and parse it.
public String getXMLElement(){
try {
File xmlFile = new File(appDataFile);
FileReader xmlRead = new FileReader(xmlFile);
XMLReader xmlParser;
SAXParserFactory spf = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
SAXParser sp = spf.newSAXParser();
SAXHandler handler = new SAXHandler();
sp.parse(new InputSource(xmlRead), handler);
i am recieving the following error when I try to run the servlet
javax.servlet.ServletException: Cannot allocate servlet instance for path /JDtrack/servlet/JDTrack
what makes this wierd is that is i take out the line
sp.parse(new InputSource(xmlRead), handler);
I do not get the error.
I am newer to java and could use all the help I can get
thanks.

Answer 1

A few things to try to help identify the problem:
-Create and InputSource before parsing the file. If the InputSource cannot be created, there may be a problem with accessing the file from your servlet.
-Write a quick program to do the same thing from an application. If you can do this outside the servlet container, it may be a problem from running inside the servlet container.
-The code you listed is in a try block, however the catch block is not listed. If you are not already doing so, place debug message (to console or log) from inside each catch block. If an exception is thrown but not handled corrrectly, the servlet container may just throw a ServletException.
Hope this helps.