XercesImpl in conflict with JavaSE 6's internal xerces implementation. Both are needed... what can be done?

Question

Hi all,

I am sure that I am not the first to encounter this conflict.

The code that I have inherited does the following:

org.w3c.dom.Document dom; // declaration
javax.xml.validation.Schema schema; // declaration

...
...
...

javax.xml.validation.Validator validator = schema.newValidator();
validator.validate(new DOMSource(dom));

where the ... stands for seemingly unimportant/irrelevant code

Compiling and running the code with JDK 6 works (and always had...)

Recently I have had to integrate into my code another component written elsewhere in the company. That component absolutely requires the inclusion in the classpath of xercesImpl-2.8.1.jar

I absolutely require this 3rd party component, but now running the code above no longer works and I get the following:

org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: cvc-elt.1: Cannot find the declaration of element 'Root'.
 at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.error(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.handleStartElement(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.startElement(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.validation.DOMValidatorHelper.beginNode(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.validation.DOMValidatorHelper.validate(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.validation.DOMValidatorHelper.validate(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.validation.ValidatorImpl.validate(Unknown Source)
 at javax.xml.validation.Validator.validate(Validator.java:127)

As a solution, I have thought perhaps somehow to shield the xercesImpl-2.8.1.jar in a classloader of its own, but have not managed to do so, perhaps due to lack of classloader knowledge or perhaps because its not the way to go. One more thing about my environment, my app runs on tomcat 5.5 and 6...

by the way while debugging I have noticed that when I run dom.getImplementation()

• when adding the xercesImpl-2.8.1.jar to the classpath the result is org.apache.xerces.dom.DeferredDOMImplementationImpl@5f15c
• when removing it the result is com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom.DeferredDOMImplementationImpl@6c6ae3

[No surprise to you careful readers I suppose]

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The first thing to try is to put the xerces jar in the endorsed directory. That will cause the whole JVM to use Xerces consistently. That may solve the whole problem right there, unless there is something special about 2.8.1 I don't know about.

Answer 2

As per http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/faq.html#faq-N100EF

To use a newer version of Xalan-Java and override the one packaged with the JDK:

use the Endorsed Standards Override Mechanism. Place the xalan.jar, serializer.jar, xercesImpl.jar and xml-apis.jar in the \lib\endorsed directory of the JRE, where is where the runtime software is installed