org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Content is not allowed in prolog

Question

I have a Java based web service client connected to Java web service (implemented on the Axis1 framework).

I am getting following exception in my log file:

Answer 1

To fix the BOM issue on Unix / Linux systems:

1. Check if there's an unwanted BOM character: hexdump -C myfile.xml | more An unwanted BOM character will appear at the start of the file as ...

2. Alternatively, do file myfile.xml. A file with a BOM character will appear as: myfile.xml: XML 1.0 document text, UTF-8 Unicode (with BOM) text

3. Fix a single file with: tail -c +4 myfile.xml > temp.xml && mv temp.xml myfile.xml

4. Repeat 1 or 2 to check the file has been sanitised. Probably also sensible to do view myfile.xml to check contents have stayed.

Here's a bash script to sanitise a whole folder of XML files:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# This script is to sanitise XML files to remove any BOM characters

has_bom() { head -c3 "$1" | LC_ALL=C grep -qe '\xef\xbb\xbf'; }

for filename in *.xml ; do
  if has_bom ${filename}; then
    tail -c +4 ${filename} > temp.xml
    mv temp.xml ${filename}
  fi
done