XMLCatalog

An XMLCatalog is a catalog of public resources such as DTDs or entities that are referenced in an XML document. Catalogs are typically used to make web references to resources point to a locally cached copy of the resource.

This allows the XML Parser, XSLT Processor or other consumer of XML documents to efficiently allow a local substitution for a resource available on the web.

This data type provides a catalog of resource locations based on the OASIS "Open Catalog" standard. The catalog entries are used both for Entity resolution and URI resolution, in accordance with Processing (JAXP) Specification.

<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.2//EN"

  "http://java.sun.com/j2ee/dtds/web-app_2_2.dtd">

This can be very time consuming during the build process, especially where network throughput is limited. Alternatively, you can do the following:

1. Copy web-app_2_2.dtd onto your local disk somewhere (either in the filesystem or even embedded inside a jar or zip file on the classpath).
element whose location attribute points to the file.
2. Success! The XML processor will now use the local copy instead of calling out to the internet.

XMLCatalogs can appear inside tasks that support this feature or at the same level as target - i.e., as children of project for reuse across different tasks, e.g. XML Validation and XSLT Transformation. The XML Validate task uses XMLCatalogs for entity resolution. The XSLT Transformation task uses XMLCatalogs for both entity and URI resolution.

XMLCatalogs are specified as either a reference to another XMLCatalog, defined previously in a build file, or as a list of dtd or entity locations. A separate classpath for entity resolution may be specified inline via nested classpath elements; otherwise the system classpath is used for this as well.

XMLCatalogs can also be nested inside other XMLCatalogs. For example, a "superset" XMLCatalog could be made by including several nested XMLCatalogs that referred to other, previously defined

Currently, only <dtd> and <entity> elements may be specified inline; these roughly correspond to OASIS catalog entry types PUBLIC and URI respectively.

Entity/DTD/URI Resolution Algorithm

1. Filesystem lookup

The location is first looked up in the filesystem. If the location is a relative path, the ant project basedir attribute is used as the base directory. If the location specifies an absolute path, it is used as is. Once we have an absolute path in hand, we check to see if a valid and readable file exists at that path. If so, we are done. If not, we proceed to the next step.

2. Classpath lookup

The location is next looked up in the classpath. Recall that jar files are merely fancy zip files. For classpath lookup, the location is used as is (no base is prepended). We use a Classloader to attempt to load the resource from the classpath. For example, if hello.jar is in the classpath and it contains foo/bar/blat.dtd it will resolve an entity whose location is foo/bar/blat.dtd. Of course, it will not resolve an entity whose location is blat.dtd.

3. URL-space lookup

Finally, we attempt to make a URL out of the location. At first this may seem like this would defeat the purpose of be used to (in a sense) implement HTTP redirects, substituting one URL for another. The mapped-to URL might also be served by a local web server. If the URL resolves to a valid and readable resource, we are done. Otherwise, we give up. In this case, the XML processor will perform its normal resolution algorithm. Depending on the processor configuration, further resolution failures may or may not result in fatal (i.e. build-ending) errors.

XMLCatalog attributes

XMLCatalog nested elements

dtd/entity

The dtd and entity elements used to specify

Attribute	Description	Required
publicId	The public identifier used when defining a dtd or entity, e.g. "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.2//EN"	Yes
location	The location of the local replacement to be used for the public identifier specified. This may be specified as a file name, resource name found on the classpath, or a URL. Relative paths will be resolved according to the base, which by default is the Ant project basedir.	Yes

classpath

The classpath to use for entity resolution. The nested <classpath> is a path-like structure.

Examples

Set up an XMLCatalog with a single dtd referenced locally in a user's home directory:

        <dtd 

            publicId="-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"

            location="/home/dion/downloads/docbook/docbookx.dtd"/>

Set up an XMLCatalog with a multiple dtds to be found either in the filesystem (relative to the Ant project basedir) or in the classpath:

        <dtd 

            publicId="-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"

            location="docbook/docbookx.dtd"/>

        <dtd 

            publicId="-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.2//EN"

            location="web-app_2_2.dtd"/>

Set up an XMLCatalog with a combination of DTDs and entities as well as a nested XMLCatalog:

        <dtd 

            publicId="-//ArielPartners//DTD XML Article V1.0//EN"

            location="com/arielpartners/knowledgebase/dtd/article.dtd"/>

        <entity 

            publicId="LargeLogo"

            location="com/arielpartners/images/ariel-logo-large.gif"/>

To reference the above XMLCatalog in an xslt task:

    <xslt basedir="${source.doc}"

           destdir="${dest.xdocs}"


           style="${source.xsl.converter.docbook}"


           force="true">


    </xslt>

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