SAX parser: Ignoring special characters

Question

I\'m using Xerces to parse my XML document. The issue is that XML escaped characters like   appear in characters() method as non-escap

Answer 1

If you supply a LexicalHandler as a callback to the SAX parser, it will inform you of the start and end of every entity reference using startEntity() and endEntity() callbacks.

(Note that the JavaDoc at http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/org/xml/sax/ext/LexicalHandler.html talks of "entities" when the correct term is "entity references").

Note also that there is no way to get a SAX parser to tell you about numeric character references such as ሴ. Applications are supposed to treat these in exactly the same way as the original character, so you really shouldn't be interested in them.