SAXParseException: Content is not allowed in prolog

java tomcat sax
Dónal picture Dónal · Dec 12, 2013 · Viewed 61k times · Source

I need to add the following file to my Tomcat's '/conf' directory:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Context useHttpOnly="false" path="/bbc">
    <Realm className="com.bbc.tomcat.BBCSecurityRealm"/>
</Context>

After adding this file, I get the following error when Tomcat starts up"

ERROR ecmdefault util.digester.Digester 18:37:14,477 localhost-startStop-1 : Parse Fatal Error at line 1 column 1: Content is not allowed in prolog.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Content is not allowed in prolog.
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:195)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.fatalError(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:174)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(XMLErrorReporter.java:388)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLScanner.reportFatalError(XMLScanner.java:1427)

Answer

A4L picture A4L · Dec 12, 2013

Your xml file has some invisible chars (most likely the BOM) at the start (before <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>) which is not allowed in xml. you could view it using a hex editor. Simplest way to fix it is to create an empty text file and copy the content into it, change the extension to xml.

Check this answer for further help.

From http://www.rgagnon.com/javadetails/java-handle-utf8-file-with-bom.html

UTF8 file are a special case because it is not recommended to add a BOM to them because it can break other tools like Java. In fact, Java assumes the UTF8 don't have a BOM so if the BOM is present it won't be discarded and it will be seen as data.

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