SOAP parse issue

Question

I get the following output in the log (GlassFish V3), when calling the web service (from Crystal Reports):
SEVERE: Couldn't create SOAP message due to exception: XML reader error: com.ctc.wstx.exc.WstxUnexpectedCharException: Illegal character ((CTRL-CHAR, code 31))
at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [1,1]
com.sun.xml.ws.protocol.soap.MessageCreationException: Couldn't create SOAP message due to exception: XML reader error: com.ctc.wstx.exc.WstxUnexpectedCharException: Illegal character ((CTRL-CHAR, code 31))
at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [1,1]
        at com.sun.xml.ws.encoding.SOAPBindingCodec.decode(SOAPBindingCodec.java:292)
        at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter.decodePacket(HttpAdapter.java:276)
        at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter.access$500(HttpAdapter.java:93)
        at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter$HttpToolkit.handle(HttpAdapter.java:432)
        at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter.handle(HttpAdapter.java:244)
        at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.ServletAdapter.handle(ServletAdapter.java:135)
        at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServletDelegate.doGet(WSServletDelegate.java:129)
        at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServletDelegate.doPost(WSServletDelegate.java:160)
        at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServlet.doPost(WSServlet.java:75)Has anyone seen this, and how can I resolve it? The SOAP message is well-formed when printed so I assume there's a hidden character, e.g. byte-order-mark causing the issue but why does the parser not handle this?

Answer 1

my guess is that you have a character entity (e.g. & #31;) in your xml document for a character which is invalid in xml (most of the control characters below 32 are invalid in xml). the annoyance is that the java xml serializer will happily encode said character despite the fact that it is illegal in an xml (1.0) document. you will only see the error when you parse the document (as you are seeing).
Edited by: jtahlborn on Sep 17, 2009 2:45 PM