trouble trying to load in an XML file to processing

Programming Questions

mburfield

trouble trying to load in an XML file to processing

in Programming Questions • 2 years ago

Hello,

I am having trouble simply trying to load a XML file into the XMLElement object and am not sure what I am doing wrong.

My XML file is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<index>
<test1 id="1" name="one">test1</test1>
<test2 id="2" name="two">test2</test2>
<test3 id="3" name="three">test3</test3>
</index>

And my code is simply:

XMLElement xml;
void setup() {
size(200, 200);
String xmlDoc = "xmlDoc.xml";
xml = = new XMLElement(this, xmlDoc);
}

This then gives a compile error:

Invalid input: `?' (0xfeff), SystemID='file:.', Line=1

at processing.xml.XMLUtil.errorInvalidInput(Unknown Source)

at processing.xml.StdXMLParser.scanData(Unknown Source)

at processing.xml.StdXMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)

at processing.xml.XMLElement.parseFromReader(Unknown Source)

at processing.xml.XMLElement.<init>(Unknown Source)

at xml_test.setup(xml_test.java:25)

at processing.core.PApplet.handleDraw(Unknown Source)

at processing.core.PApplet.run(Unknown Source)

at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

My xml file is saved next to the pde file in my sketchbook. I've tried putting the xml file in a folder called "data" but then it can't be found. As far as I can see, I'm doing exactly the same as in the XMLElement reference http://processing.org/reference/XMLElement.html and I can't figure out what's going wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Replies(7)

blindfish

Re: trouble trying to load in an XML file to processing

2 years ago

xml = = new XMLElement(this, xmlDoc);

That repeated equal sign might be the problem ;)

PhiLho

Re: trouble trying to load in an XML file to processing

2 years ago

Beside the error pointed by blindfish (which just make the sketch to read the file but not assign it to the variable), you have a runtime error, not a compile error.
The error is " Invalid input: `?' (0xfeff)"
0xFEFF is a typical Unicode UTF-16 Bom. Which means that you probably used Notepad to save the file, keeping the default file format. Resave in Ascii or UTF-8 format, which is understood by Processing.

mburfield

Re: trouble trying to load in an XML file to processing

2 years ago

Thank you both for your replies...

@blindfish: Thank you for pointing that out, I don't know where that extra equal sign came from

@phi.lho: I think you are right in that it is to do with my XML itself. Although I'm still not sure what's going wrong...I have created my xml file using visual studio 2010 in both utf-8 and utf-16 formats, and still receive the same error.

Subsequently I tried changing the xmlDoc to point at another xml document I found in someone else's code: http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=seoul&;hl=en and everything worked swimmingly.

Potentially I need to use a different XML editor?

mburfield

Re: trouble trying to load in an XML file to processing

2 years ago

Just in case anyone else ever has this same problem. It seems as though it was something to do with the Visual Studio 2010 XML editor. (I'm using 64 bit windows 7).

After I downloaded <Oxygen/> xml editor, everything worked fine.

PhiLho

Re: trouble trying to load in an XML file to processing

2 years ago

Notepad, Visual Studio, two tools made by Microsoft... I believe they are the only editor insisting to make a Bom for UTF-8 as well, even though it doesn't need one, so maybe you got a similar issue. A good old plain simple text editor (beside Notepad itself, well known to be brain dead...) can probably do a better job. I use SciTE, lightweight and powerful, lot of people prefer Notepad++ (using same base editor component), bigger but slightly easier to set up, but there is literally hundred of other free choices.

lwerber

Re: trouble trying to load in an XML file to processing

2 years ago

I am getting this exact same error, except the xml document i'm using is coming from an api created by the world bank:

http://api.worldbank.org/countries/AF/indicators/SP.POP.TOTL?format=xml

I'm using the api to get the population of every country, each country has a different xml page so it would be really time consuming to save every xml file to my data folder and resave them out as plain text

Invalid input: `?' (0xfeff), SystemID='file:.', Line=1
at processing.xml.XMLUtil.errorInvalidInput(XMLUtil.java:513)
...

Any idea why I'm getting this error?

PhiLho

Re: trouble trying to load in an XML file to processing

2 years ago

Processing's XML library is for simple cases. For real world XML, you might want to look at Java's XML library, JAXB. There is an introduction to it on the wiki.

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