Validating XML and skipping new lines & white spaces ?

Question

Hi everybody !
I'm currently developping a new application and the configuration is done within a XML file. My problem is that I'm using IP addresses and so users have to write things like this :
<agentIP>
132.137.43.2
</agentIP>
and I have a problem with the Java SAX parser : in fact I have declared the type of agentIP in a XML Schema like this :
<xs:simpleType name="IPAddress">
<xs:restriction base="xs:string">
<xs:pattern value="((1?[0-9]?[0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5]).){3}(1?[0-9]?[0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])"/>
</xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>
and the problem is that if there are some white spaces before the IP or some new lines (in fact the user can format this XML file in different manners), I have a parsing error because the parser interprets these characters too.
Has somebody any idea how to tell the parser to skip these characters ???
for information here is my source code :
ErrorHandler errorHandler = new MyErrorHandler();
    content.setLength(0);
    agentTable = new AgentTable();
    SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
    factory.setNamespaceAware(true);
    factory.setValidating(true);
    SAXParser saxParser = null;
    try {
      saxParser = factory.newSAXParser();
    catch (ParserConfigurationException ex1) {
      ex1.printStackTrace();
    catch (SAXException ex1) {
      ex1.printStackTrace();
    try {
      saxParser.setProperty(JAXP_SCHEMA_LANGUAGE, W3C_XML_SCHEMA);
      try {
        saxParser.setProperty(
            "http://java.sun.com/xml/jaxp/properties/schemaSource",
            new org.xml.sax.InputSource(jamap.share.Constants.networkMap));
      catch (SAXNotRecognizedException ex4) {
      catch (SAXNotSupportedException ex4) {
    catch (SAXNotSupportedException ex3) {
      ex3.printStackTrace();
    catch (SAXNotRecognizedException ex3) {
      ex3.printStackTrace();
    org.xml.sax.XMLReader xmlReader = null;
    try {
      xmlReader = saxParser.getXMLReader();
    catch (SAXException ex) {
      ex.printStackTrace();
    xmlReader.setContentHandler(this);
    xmlReader.setErrorHandler(errorHandler);
    //    xmlReader.setProperty(
    //      "http://apache.org/xml/properties/schema/external-schemaLocation",
    //    new File("http://localhost:8080/agentfile.xml"));
    //xmlReader.setErrorHandler (new (ErrorHandler()));
    try {
      xmlReader.parse(new org.xml.sax.InputSource(jamap.share.Constants.homeDir +
                                                  jamap.share.Constants.
                                                  AgentFile));
    catch (SAXException ex2) {
      ex2.printStackTrace();
      System.out.println("Please correct your XML file !");
    catch (IOException ex2) {
      ex2.printStackTrace();
      System.out.println("Error in parsing the agent.xml file");
    return agentTable;
  public void startElement(java.lang.String uri,
                           java.lang.String localName,
                           java.lang.String qName,
                           Attributes attributes
                           ) throws
      SAXException {
    if (qName.equals("proxy")) {
      isAgentViaProxy = true;
    content.setLength(0);
  public void characters(char[] chars, int start, int len) throws SAXException {
    content.append(chars, start, len);
  public void ignorableWhitespace(char[] ch,
                                  int start,
                                  int length) throws SAXException {
    System.out.println("Some white spaces were ignored !");
  }and here the XML Schema used:
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<xs:simpleType name="IPAddress">
  <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
    <xs:pattern value="((1?[0-9]?[0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5]).){3}(1?[0-9]?[0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])"/>
  </xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>
<xs:element name='networkMap'>
  <xs:complexType>
   <xs:sequence>
     <xs:element ref='agent' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/>
   </xs:sequence>
  </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="agent">
  <xs:complexType>
   <xs:sequence>
     <xs:element name="ipAddress" type="IPAddress" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" />
     <xs:element name="proxy" type="IPAddress" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" />
   </xs:sequence>
  </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:schema>THANK YOU...
PA

Answer 1

Hi !
I've found the solution finally and as nobody wrote me I'll explain it...
Basically to ignore white spaces you need to specify it within your XML Schema : here is an example of a possible description for an IPv6 address inside an XML schema :
<xs:simpleType name="IPv6Address">
  <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
   <xs:whiteSpace value="collapse" fixed="true"/>
   <xs:pattern value="((1?[0-9]?[0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5]).){7}(1?[0-9]?[0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])"/>
  </xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>as you can see <xs:whiteSpace value="collapse" fixed="true"/> is solving the problem !!
Bye..
PA
http://www.doffoel.com