In previous Java SAX XML example, there is no problem if you use SAX to parse a plain text (ANSI) XML file, however, if you parse a XML file which contains some special UTF-8 characters, it will prompts “Invalid byte 1 of 1-byte UTF-8 sequence” exception.

com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.io.MalformedByteSequenceException: 
Invalid byte 1 of 1-byte UTF-8 sequence.

See following xml file which contain a special UTF-8 characters “§” (press Alt + 789)

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<company>
	<staff>
		<firstname>yong</firstname>
		<lastname>mook kim</lastname>
		<nickname>§</nickname>
		<salary>100000</salary>
	</staff>
</company>

To fix it, just override the SAX input source like this :

File file = new File("c:\\file-utf.xml");
InputStream inputStream= new FileInputStream(file);
Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(inputStream,"UTF-8");
 
InputSource is = new InputSource(reader);
is.setEncoding("UTF-8");
 
saxParser.parse(is, handler);

See a full example of using SAX parser to parse a Unicode XML file.

package com.mkyong.test;
 
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.Reader;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;
import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;
 
public class ReadXMLUTF8FileSAX 
{
    public static void main( String[] args )
    {
    	try {
 
    	      SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
    	      SAXParser saxParser = factory.newSAXParser();
 
    	      DefaultHandler handler = new DefaultHandler() {
 
    	        boolean bfname = false;
    	        boolean blname = false;
    	        boolean bnname = false;
    	        boolean bsalary = false;
 
    	        public void startElement(String uri, String localName,
    	            String qName, Attributes attributes)
    	            throws SAXException {
 
    	          System.out.println("Start Element :" + qName);
 
    	          if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("FIRSTNAME")) {
    	        	  bfname = true;
    	          }
 
    	          if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("LASTNAME")) {
    	        	  blname = true;
    	          }
 
    	          if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("NICKNAME")) {
    	        	  bnname = true;
    	          }
 
    	          if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("SALARY")) {
    	        	  bsalary = true;
    	          }
 
    	        }
 
    	        public void endElement(String uri, String localName,
    	                String qName)
    	                throws SAXException {
 
    	              System.out.println("End Element :" + qName);
 
    	        }
 
    	        public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length)
    	            throws SAXException {
 
    	          System.out.println(new String(ch, start, length));
 
 
    	          if (bfname) {
    	            System.out.println("First Name : "
    	                + new String(ch, start, length));
    	            bfname = false;
    	          }
 
    	          if (blname) {
    	              System.out.println("Last Name : "
    	                  + new String(ch, start, length));
    	              blname = false;
    	           }
 
    	          if (bnname) {
    	              System.out.println("Nick Name : "
    	                  + new String(ch, start, length));
    	              bnname = false;
    	           }
 
    	          if (bsalary) {
    	              System.out.println("Salary : "
    	                  + new String(ch, start, length));
    	              bsalary = false;
    	           }
 
    	        }
 
    	      };
 
    	      File file = new File("c:\\file.xml");
    	      InputStream inputStream= new FileInputStream(file);
    	      Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(inputStream,"UTF-8");
 
    	      InputSource is = new InputSource(reader);
    	      is.setEncoding("UTF-8");
 
    	      saxParser.parse(is, handler);
 
 
    	    } catch (Exception e) {
    	      e.printStackTrace();
    	    }
 
    }
}
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