Accessing properties in hierarchical configurations

We will start with a simple XML document to show some basics about accessing properties. The following file named gui.xml is used as example document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<gui-definition>
  <colors>
    <background>#808080</background>
    <text>#000000</text>
    <header>#008000</header>
    <link normal="#000080" visited="#800080"/>
    <default>${colors.header}</default>
  </colors>
  <rowsPerPage>15</rowsPerPage>
  <buttons>
    <name>OK,Cancel,Help</name>
  </buttons>
  <numberFormat pattern="###\,###.##"/>
</gui-definition>

(As becomes obvious, this tutorial does not bother with good design of XML documents, the example file should rather demonstrate the different ways of accessing properties.) To access the data stored in this document it must be loaded by XMLConfiguration. Like other file based configuration classes XMLConfiguration supports many ways of specifying the file to process. One way is to pass the file name to the constructor as shown in the following code fragment:

try
{
    XMLConfiguration config = new XMLConfiguration("tables.xml");
    // do something with config
}
catch(ConfigurationException cex)
{
    // something went wrong, e.g. the file was not found
}

If no exception was thrown, the properties defined in the XML document are now available in the configuration object. Other hierarchical configuration classes that operate on files have corresponding constructors and methods for loading their data. The following fragment shows how the properties can be accessed:

String backColor = config.getString("colors.background");
String textColor = config.getString("colors.text");
String linkNormal = config.getString("colors.link[@normal]");
String defColor = config.getString("colors.default");
int rowsPerPage = config.getInt("rowsPerPage");
List<Object> buttons = config.getList("buttons.name");

This listing demonstrates some important points about constructing keys for accessing properties in hierarchical configuration sources and about features of HierarchicalConfiguration in general:

• Nested elements are accessed using a dot notation. In the example document there is an element <text> in the body of the <color> element. The corresponding key is color.text.
• The root element is ignored when constructing keys. In the example you do not write gui-definition.color.text, but only color.text.
• Attributes of XML elements are accessed in a XPath like notation.
• Interpolation can be used as in PropertiesConfiguration. Here the <default> element in the colors section refers to another color.
• Lists of properties can be defined in a short form using the delimiter character (which is the comma by default). In this example the buttons.name property has the three values OK, Cancel, and Help, so it is queried using the getList() method. This works in attributes, too. Using the static setDefaultDelimiter() method of AbstractConfiguration you can globally define a different delimiter character or - by setting the delimiter to 0 - disabling this mechanism completely. Placing a backslash before a delimiter character will escape it. This is demonstrated in the pattern attribute of the numberFormat element.

In the next section will show how data in a more complex XML document can be processed.

Complex hierarchical structures

Consider the following scenario: An application operates on database tables and wants to load a definition of the database schema from its configuration. A XML document provides this information. It could look as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<database>
  <tables>
    <table tableType="system">
      <name>users</name>
      <fields>
        <field>
          <name>uid</name>
          <type>long</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>uname</name>
          <type>java.lang.String</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>firstName</name>
          <type>java.lang.String</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>lastName</name>
          <type>java.lang.String</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>email</name>
          <type>java.lang.String</type>
        </field>
      </fields>
    </table>
    <table tableType="application">
      <name>documents</name>
      <fields>
        <field>
          <name>docid</name>
          <type>long</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>name</name>
          <type>java.lang.String</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>creationDate</name>
          <type>java.util.Date</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>authorID</name>
          <type>long</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>version</name>
          <type>int</type>
        </field>
      </fields>
    </table>
  </tables>
</database>

This XML is quite self explanatory; there is an arbitrary number of table elements, each of it has a name and a list of fields. A field in turn consists of a name and a data type. This XML document (let's call it tables.xml) can be loaded in exactly the same way as the simple document in the section before.

When we now want to access some of the properties we face a problem: the syntax for constructing configuration keys we learned so far is not powerful enough to access all of the data stored in the tables document.

Because the document contains a list of tables some properties are defined more than once. E.g. the configuration key tables.table.name refers to a name element inside a table element inside a tables element. This constellation happens to occur twice in the tables document.

Multiple definitions of a property do not cause problems and are supported by all classes of Configuration. If such a property is queried using getProperty(), the method recognizes that there are multiple values for that property and returns a collection with all these values. So we could write

Object prop = config.getProperty("tables.table.name");
if(prop instanceof Collection)
{
	System.out.println("Number of tables: " + ((Collection<?>) prop).size());
}

An alternative to this code would be the getList() method of Configuration. If a property is known to have multiple values (as is the table name property in this example), getList() allows retrieving all values at once. Note: it is legal to call getString() or one of the other getter methods on a property with multiple values; it returns the first element of the list.

Accessing structured properties

Okay, we can obtain a list with the names of all defined tables. In the same way we can retrieve a list with the names of all table fields: just pass the key tables.table.fields.field.name to the getList() method. In our example this list would contain 10 elements, the names of all fields of all tables. This is fine, but how do we know, which field belongs to which table?

When working with such hierarchical structures the configuration keys used to query properties can have an extended syntax. All components of a key can be appended by a numerical value in parentheses that determines the index of the affected property. So if we have two table elements we can exactly specify, which one we want to address by appending the corresponding index. This is explained best by some examples:

We will now provide some configuration keys and show the results of a getProperty() call with these keys as arguments.

tables.table(0).name

Returns the name of the first table (all indices are 0 based), in this example the string users.

tables.table(0)[@tableType]

Returns the value of the tableType attribute of the first table (system).

tables.table(1).name

Analogous to the first example returns the name of the second table (documents).

tables.table(2).name

Here the name of a third table is queried, but because there are only two tables result is null. The fact that a null value is returned for invalid indices can be used to find out how many values are defined for a certain property: just increment the index in a loop as long as valid objects are returned.

tables.table(1).fields.field.name

Returns a collection with the names of all fields that belong to the second table. With such kind of keys it is now possible to find out, which fields belong to which table.

tables.table(1).fields.field(2).name

The additional index after field selects a certain field. This expression represents the name of the third field in the second table (creationDate).

tables.table.fields.field(0).type

This key may be a bit unusual but nevertheless completely valid. It selects the data types of the first fields in all tables. So here a collection would be returned with the values [long, long].

These examples should make the usage of indices quite clear. Because each configuration key can contain an arbitrary number of indices it is possible to navigate through complex structures of hierarchical configurations; each property can be uniquely identified.

Sometimes dealing with long property keys may become inconvenient, especially if always the same properties are accessed. For this case HierarchicalConfiguration provides a short cut with the configurationAt() method. This method can be passed a key that selects exactly one node of the hierarchy of nodes contained in a hierarchical configuration. Then a new hierarchical configuration will be returned whose root node is the selected node. So all property keys passed into that configuration should be relative to the new root node. For instance, if we are only interested in information about the first database table, we could do something like that:

HierarchicalConfiguration sub = config.configurationAt("tables.table(0)");
String tableName = sub.getString("name");  // only need to provide relative path
List<Object> fieldNames = sub.getList("fields.field.name");

For dealing with complex list-like structures there is another short cut. Often it will be necessary to iterate over all items in the list and access their (sub) properties. A good example are the fields of the tables in our demo configuration. When you want to process all fields of a table (e.g. for constructing a CREATE TABLE statement), you will need all information stored for them in the configuration. An option would be to use the getList() method to fetch the required data one by one:

List<Object> fieldNames = config.getList("tables.table(0).fields.field.name");
List<Object> fieldTypes = config.getList("tables.table(0).fields.field.type");
List<Object> ... // further calls for other data that might be stored in the config

But this is not very readable and will fail if not all field elements contain the same set of data (for instance the type property may be optional, then the list for the types can contain less elements than the other lists). A solution to these problems is the configurationsAt() method, a close relative to the configurationAt() method covered above. This method evaluates the passed in key and collects all configuration nodes that match this criterion. Then for each node a HierarchicalConfiguration object is created with this node as root node. A list with these configuration objects is returned. As the following example shows this comes in very handy when processing list-like structures:

List<HierarchicalConfiguration> fields =
    config.configurationsAt("tables.table(0).fields.field");
for(HierarchicalConfiguration sub : fields)
{
    // sub contains all data about a single field
    String fieldName = sub.getString("name");
    String fieldType = sub.getString("type");
    ...

The configurations returned by the configurationAt() and configurationsAt() method are in fact instances of the SubnodeConfiguration class. The API documentation of this class contains more information about its features and limitations.

Adding new properties

So far we have learned how to use indices to avoid ambiguities when querying properties. The same problem occurs when adding new properties to a structured configuration. As an example let's assume we want to add a new field to the second table. New properties can be added to a configuration using the addProperty() method. Of course, we have to exactly specify where in the tree like structure new data is to be inserted. A statement like

// Warning: This might cause trouble!
config.addProperty("tables.table.fields.field.name", "size");

would not be sufficient because it does not contain all needed information. How is such a statement processed by the addProperty() method?

addProperty() splits the provided key into its single parts and navigates through the properties tree along the corresponding element names. In this example it will start at the root element and then find the tables element. The next key part to be processed is table, but here a problem occurs: the configuration contains two table properties below the tables element. To get rid off this ambiguity an index can be specified at this position in the key that makes clear, which of the two properties should be followed. tables.table(1).fields.field.name e.g. would select the second table property. If an index is missing, addProperty() always follows the last available element. In our example this would be the second table, too.

The following parts of the key are processed in exactly the same manner. Under the selected table property there is exactly one fields property, so this step is not problematic at all. In the next step the field part has to be processed. At the actual position in the properties tree there are multiple field (sub) properties. So we here have the same situation as for the table part. Because no explicit index is defined the last field property is selected. The last part of the key passed to addProperty() (name in this example) will always be added as new property at the position that has been reached in the former processing steps. So in our example the last field property of the second table would be given a new name sub property and the resulting structure would look like the following listing:

	...
    <table tableType="application">
      <name>documents</name>
      <fields>
        <field>
          <name>docid</name>
          <type>long</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>name</name>
          <type>java.lang.String</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>creationDate</name>
          <type>java.util.Date</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>authorID</name>
          <type>long</type>
        </field>
        <field>
          <name>version</name>
          <name>size</name>    <== Newly added property
          <type>int</type>
        </field>
      </fields>
    </table>
  </tables>
</database>

This result is obviously not what was desired, but it demonstrates how addProperty() works: the method follows an existing branch in the properties tree and adds new leaves to it. (If the passed in key does not match a branch in the existing tree, a new branch will be added. E.g. if we pass the key tables.table.data.first.test, the existing tree can be navigated until the data part of the key. From here a new branch is started with the remaining parts data, first and test.)

If we want a different behavior, we must explicitly tell addProperty() what to do. In our example with the new field our intension was to create a new branch for the field part in the key, so that a new field property is added to the structure rather than adding sub properties to the last existing field property. This can be achieved by specifying the special index (-1) at the corresponding position in the key as shown below:

config.addProperty("tables.table(1).fields.field(-1).name", "size");
config.addProperty("tables.table(1).fields.field.type", "int");

The first line in this fragment specifies that a new branch is to be created for the field property (index -1). In the second line no index is specified for the field, so the last one is used - which happens to be the field that has just been created. So these two statements add a fully defined field to the second table. This is the default pattern for adding new properties or whole hierarchies of properties: first create a new branch in the properties tree and then populate its sub properties. As an additional example let's add a complete new table definition to our example configuration:

// Add a new table element and define the name
config.addProperty("tables.table(-1).name", "versions");

// Add a new field to the new table
// (an index for the table is not necessary because the latest is used)
config.addProperty("tables.table.fields.field(-1).name", "id");
config.addProperty("tables.table.fields.field.type", "int");

// Add another field to the new table
config.addProperty("tables.table.fields.field(-1).name", "date");
config.addProperty("tables.table.fields.field.type", "java.sql.Date");
...

For more information about adding properties to a hierarchical configuration also have a look at the javadocs for HierarchicalConfiguration.

Escaping special characters

Some characters in property keys or values require a special treatment.

Per default the dot character is used as delimiter by most configuration classes (we will learn how to change this for hierarchical configurations in a later section). In some configuration formats however, dots can be contained in the names of properties. For instance, in XML the dot is a legal character that can occur in any tag. The same is true for the names of properties in windows ini files. So the following XML document is completely valid:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<configuration>
  <test.value>42</test.value>
  <test.complex>
    <test.sub.element>many dots</test.sub.element>
  </test.complex>
</configuration>

This XML document can be loaded by XMLConfiguration without trouble, but when we want to access certain properties we face a problem: The configuration claims that it does not store any values for the properties with the keys test.value or test.complex.test.sub.element!

Of course, it is the dot character contained in the property names, which causes this problem. A dot is always interpreted as a delimiter between elements. So given the property key test.value the configuration would look for an element named test and then for a sub element with the name value. To change this behavior it is possible to escape a dot character, thus telling the configuration that it is really part of an element name. This is simply done by duplicating the dot. So the following statements will return the desired property values:

int testVal = config.getInt("test..value");
String complex = config.getString("test..complex.test..sub..element");

Note the duplicated dots wherever the dot does not act as delimiter. This way it is possible to access properties containing dots in arbitrary combination. However, as you can see, the escaping can be confusing sometimes. So if you have a choice, you should avoid dots in the tag names of your XML configuration files or other configuration sources.

Another source of problems is related to list delimiter characters in the values of properties. Like other configuration classes XMLConfiguration implements list handling. This means that the values of XML elements and attributes are checked whether they contain a list delimiter character. If this is the case, the value is split, and a list property is created. Per default this feature is enabled. Have a look at the following example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<configuration>
  <pi>3,1415</pi>
</configuration>

Here we use the comma as delimiter for fraction digits (as is standard for some languages). However, the configuration will interpret the comma as list delimiter character and assign the property pi the two values 3 and 1415. This was not desired.

XML has a natural way of defining list properties by simply repeating elements. So defining multiple values of a property in a single element or attribute is a rather untypical use case. Unfortunately, early versions of Commons Configuration had list delimiter splitting enabled per default. Later it became obvious that this feature can cause serious problems related to the interpretation of property values and the escaping of delimiter characters. For reasons of backwards compatibility we have to stick to this approach in the 1.x series though.

In the next major release the handling of lists will probably be reworked. Therefore it is recommended not to use this feature. You are save if you disable it immediately after the creation of an XMLConfiguration object (and before a file is loaded). This can be achieved as follows:

XMLConfiguration config = new XMLConfiguration();
config.setDelimiterParsingDisabled(true);
config.setAttributeSplittingDisabled(true);
config.load("config.xml");

The default expression engine

The syntax described so far for property keys of hierarchical configurations is implemented by a specific implementation of the ExpressionEngine interface called DefaultExpressionEngine. An instance of this class is installed as the global expression engine in HierarchicalConfiguration. So all newly created instances of this class will make use of this engine (which is the reason that our examples above worked).

After reading the examples of property keys provided so far in this document you should have a sound understanding regarding the features and the syntax supported by the DefaultExpressionEngine class. But it can do a little bit more for you: it defines a bunch of properties, which can be used to customize most tokens that can appear in a valid property key. You prefer curly brackets over parenthesis as index markers? You find the duplicated dot as escaped property delimiter counter-intuitive? Well, simply go ahead and change it! The following example shows how the syntax of a DefaultExpressionEngine object is modified. Then this object is set as the global expression engine, so that from now on all hierarchical configuration objects will take up this new syntax:

DefaultExpressionEngine engine = new DefaultExpressionEngine();

// Use a slash as property delimiter
engine.setPropertyDelimiter("/");
// Indices should be provided in curly brackets
engine.setIndexStart("{");
engine.setIndexEnd("}");
// For attributes use simply a @
engine.setAttributeStart("@");
engine.setAttributeEnd(null);
// A Backslash is used for escaping property delimiters
engine.setEscapedDelimiter("\\/");

// Now install this engine as the global engine
HierarchicalConfiguration.setDefaultExpressionEngine(engine);

// Access properties using the new syntax
HierarchicalConfiguration config = ...
String tableName = config.getString("tables/table{0}/name");
String tableType = config.getString("tables/table{0}@type");
         

Tip: Sometimes when processing an XML document you don't want to distinguish between attributes and "normal" child nodes. You can achieve this by setting the AttributeEnd property to null and the AttributeStart property to the same value as the PropertyDelimiter property. Then the syntax for accessing attributes is the same as the syntax for other properties:

DefaultExpressionEngine engine = new DefaultExpressionEngine();
engine.setAttributeEnd(null);
engine.setAttributeStart(engine.getPropertyDelimiter());
...
Object value = config.getProperty("tables.table(0).name");
// name can either be a child node of table or an attribute
         

The XPATH expression engine

The expression language provided by the DefaultExpressionEngine class is powerful enough to address all properties in a hierarchical configuration, but it is not always convenient to use. Especially if list structures are involved, it is often necessary to iterate through the whole list to find a certain element.

Think about our example configuration that stores information about database tables. A use case could be to load all fields that belong to the "users" table. If you knew the index of this table, you could simply build a property key like tables.table(<index>).fields.field.name, but how do you find out the correct index? When using the default expression engine, the only solution to this problem is to iterate over all tables until you find the "users" table.

Life would be much easier if an expression language could be used, which would directly support queries of such kind. In the XML world, the XPATH syntax has grown popular as a powerful means of querying structured data. In XPATH a query that selects all field names of the "users" table would look something like tables/table[@name='users']/fields/name (here we assume that the table's name is modelled as an attribute). This is not only much simpler than an iteration over all tables, but also much more readable: it is quite obvious, which fields are selected by this query.

Given the power of XPATH it is no wonder that we got many user requests to add XPATH support to Commons Configuration. Well, here is it!

For enabling XPATH syntax for property keys you need the XPathExpressionEngine class. This class implements the ExpressionEngine interface and can be plugged into a HierarchicalConfiguration object using the setExpressionEngine() method. It is also possible to set an instance of this class as the global expression engine, so that all hierarchical configuration objects make use of XPATH syntax. The following code fragment shows how XPATH support can be enabled for a configuration object:

HierarchicalConfiguration config = ...
config.setExpressionEngine(new XPathExpressionEngine());

// Now we can use XPATH queries:
List<Object> fields = config.getList("tables/table[1]/fields/name");
         

XPATH expressions are not only used for selecting properties (i.e. for the several getter methods), but also for adding new properties. For this purpose the keys passed into the addProperty() method must conform to a special syntax. They consist of two parts: the first part is an arbitrary XPATH expression that selects the node where the new property is to be added to, the second part defines the new element to be added. Both parts are separated by whitespace.

Okay, let's make an example. Say, we want to add a type property under the first table (as a sibling to the name element). Then the first part of our key will have to select the first table element, the second part will simply be type, i.e. the name of the new property:

config.addProperty("tables/table[1] type", "system");
         

(Note that indices in XPATH are 1-based, while in the default expression language they are 0-based.) In this example the part tables/table[1] selects the target element of the add operation. This element must exist and must be unique, otherwise an exception will be thrown. type is the name of the new element that will be added. If instead of a normal element an attribute should be added, the example becomes

config.addProperty("tables/table[1] @type", "system");
         

It is possible to add complete paths at once. Then the single elements in the new path are separated by "/" characters. The following example shows how data about a new table can be added to the configuration. Here we use full paths:

// Add new table "tasks" with name element and type attribute
config.addProperty("tables table/name", "tasks");
// last() selects the last element of this name,
// which is the newest table element
config.addProperty("tables/table[last()] @type", "system");

// Now add fields
config.addProperty("tables/table[last()] fields/field/name", "taskid");
config.addProperty("tables/table[last()]/fields/field[last()] type", "int");
config.addProperty("tables/table[last()]/fields field/name", "name");
config.addProperty("tables/table[last()]/fields field/name", "startDate");
...
         

The first line of this example adds the path table/name to the tables element, i.e. a new table element will be created and added as last child to the tables element. Then a new name element is added as child to the new table element. To this element the value "tasks" is assigned. The next line adds a type attribute to the new table element. To obtain the correct table element, to which the attribute must be added, the XPATH function last() is used; this function selects the last element with a given name, which in this case is the new table element. The following lines all use the same approach to construct a new element hierarchy: At first complete new branches are added (fields/field/name), then to the newly created elements further children are added.

There is one gotcha with these keys described so far: they do not work with the setProperty() method! This is because setProperty() has to check whether the passed in key already exists; therefore it needs a key which can be interpreted by query methods. If you want to use setProperty(), you can pass in regular keys (i.e. without a whitespace separator). The method then tries to figure out which part of the key already exists in the configuration and adds new nodes as necessary. In principle such regular keys can also be used with addProperty(). However, they do not contain sufficient information to decide where new nodes should be added.

To make this clearer let's go back to the example with the tables. Consider that there is a configuration which already contains information about some database tables. In order to add a new table element in the configuration addProperty() could be used as follows:

config.addProperty("tables/table/name", "documents");
         

In the configuration a <tables> element already exists, also <table> and <name> elements. How should the expression engine know where new node structures are to be added? The solution to this problem is to provide this information in the key by stating:

config.addProperty("tables table/name", "documents");
         

Now it is clear that new nodes should be added as children of the <tables> element. More information about keys and how they play together with addProperty() and setProperty() can be found in the Javadocs for XPathExpressionEngine.

Note: XPATH support is implemented through Commons JXPath. So when making use of this feature, be sure you include the commons-jxpath jar in your classpath.

In this tutorial we don't want to describe XPATH syntax and expressions in detail. Please refer to corresponding documentation. It is important to mention that by embedding Commons JXPath the full extent of the XPATH 1.0 standard can be used for constructing property keys.

Validation using a DTD

The easiest way to turn on validation is to simply set the validating property to true as shown in the following example:

XMLConfiguration config = new XMLConfiguration();
config.setFileName("myconfig.xml");
config.setValidating(true);

// This will throw a ConfigurationException if the XML document does not
// conform to its DTD.
config.load();

Setting the validating flag to true will cause XMLConfiguration to use a validating XML parser. At this parser a custom ErrorHandler will be registered, which throws exceptions on simple and fatal parsing errors.

Validation using a Schema

XML Parsers also provide support for validating XML documents using an XML Schema. XMLConfiguration provides a simple mechanism for enabling this by setting the schemaValidation flag to true. This will also set the validating flag to true so both do not need to be set. The XML Parser will then use the schema defined in the XML document to validate it. Enabling schema validation will also enable the parser's namespace support.

XMLConfiguration config = new XMLConfiguration();
config.setFileName("myconfig.xml");
config.setSchemaValidation(true);

// This will throw a ConfigurationException if the XML document does not
// conform to its Schema.
config.load();

Default Entity Resolution

There is also some support for dealing with DTD files. Often the DTD of an XML document is stored locally so that it can be quickly accessed. However the DOCTYPE declaration of the document points to a location on the web as in the following example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app
  PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.2//EN"
  "http://java.sun.com/j2ee/dtds/web-app_2.2.dtd">

When working with XML documents directly you would use an EntityResolver in such a case. The task of such an entity resolver is to point the XML parser to the location of the file referred to by the declaration. So in our example the entity resolver would load the DTD file from a local cache instead of retrieving it from the internet.

XMLConfiguration provides a simple default implementation of an EntityResolver. This implementation is initialized by calling the registerEntityId() method with the public IDs of the entities to be retrieved and their corresponding local URLs. This method has to be called before the configuration is loaded. To continue our example, consider that the DTD file for our example document is stored on the class path. We can register it at XMLConfiguration using the following code:

XMLConfiguration config = new XMLConfiguration();
// load the URL to the DTD file from class path
URL dtdURL = getClass().getResource("web-app_2.2.dtd");
// register it at the configuration
config.registerEntityId("-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.2//EN",
    dtdURL);
config.setValidating(true);  // enable validation
config.setFileName("web.xml");
config.load();

This basically tells the XML configuration to use the specified URL when it encounters the given public ID. Note that the call to registerEntityId() has to be performed before the configuration is loaded. So you cannot use one of the constructors that directly load the configuration.

Enhanced Entity Resolution

While the default entity resolver can be used under certain circumstances, it does not work well when using the DefaultConfigurationBuilder. Furthermore, in many circumstances the programmatic nature of registering entities will tie the application tightly to the XML content. In addition, because it only works with the public id it cannot support XML documents using an XML Schema.

XML Entity and URI Resolvers describes using a set of catalog files to resolve entities. Commons Configuration provides support for this Catalog Resolver through its own CatalogResolver class.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<Employees xmlns="https://commons.apache.org/employee"
           xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
           xsi:schemaLocation="https://commons.apache.org/employee https://commons.apache.org/sample.xsd">
  <Employee>
    <SSN>555121211</SSN>
    <Name>John Doe</Name>
    <DateOfBirth>1975-05-15</DateOfBirth>
    <EmployeeType>Exempt</EmployeeType>
    <Salary>100000</Salary>
  </Employee>
</Employees>

The XML sample above is an XML document using a default namespace of https://commons.apache.org/employee. The schemaLocation allows a set of namespaces and hints to the location of their corresponding schemas. When processing the document the parser will pass the hint, in this case https://commons.apache.org/sample.xsd, to the entity resolver as the system id. More information on using schema locations can be found at schemaLocation.

The example that follows shows how to use the CatalogResolver when processing an XMLConfiguration. It should be noted that by using the setEntityResolver method any EntityResolver may be used, not just those provided by Commons Configuration.

CatalogResolver resolver = new CatalogResolver();
resolver.setCatalogFiles("local/catalog.xml","http://test.org/catalogs/catalog1.xml");
XMLConfiguration config = new XMLConfiguration();
config.setEntityResolver(resolver);
config.setSchemaValidation(true);  // enable schema validation
config.setFileName("config.xml");
config.load();

Extending Validation and Entity Resolution

The mechanisms provided with Commons Configuration will hopefully be sufficient in most cases, however there will certainly be circumstances where they are not. XMLConfiguration provides two extension mechanisms that should provide applications with all the flexibility they may need. The first, registering a custom Entity Resolver has already been discussed in the preceding section. The second is that XMLConfiguration provides a generic way of setting up the XML parser to use: A preconfigured DocumentBuilder object can be passed to the setDocumentBuilder() method.

So an application can create a DocumentBuilder object and initialize it according to its special needs. Then this object must be passed to the XMLConfiguration instance before invocation of the load() method. When loading a configuration file, the passed in DocumentBuilder will be used instead of the default one. Note: If a custom DocumentBuilder is used, the default implementation of the EntityResolver interface is disabled. This means that the registerEntityId() method has no effect in this mode.