Hi Shruthi,
The following XSLT 1.0 transformation using Xalan-J 2.7.3,
resolves the issue you've described.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [
<!ENTITY eacute "Hello">
]>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="html" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head>
<title>Openjdk bug report test</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>é</h2>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
This resolution should work with Xalan-J bundled with OpenJDK as well.
HTH
On Thu, Apr 9, 2026 at 11:04 AM Shruthi . <[email protected]> wrote:
> I would like to seek clarification on a behavior observed when performing an
> XSL transformation followed by XML parsing.
>
> Problem Description :
> A SAXParseException is encountered when parsing the result of a Java XSL
> transformation that uses HTML output and contains accented characters
> represented.
>
> Scenario:
> We perform an XSL transformation using `Transformer`, and then attempt to
> parse the resulting output using `DocumentBuilder`.
>
> When the XSLT uses:
> <xsl:output method="html" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
>
> the transformation succeeds, but parsing the result fails with the following
> error:
>
> [Fatal Error] :4:98: The entity "eacute" was referenced, but not declared.
> org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; lineNumber: 4; columnNumber: 98; The entity
> "eacute" was referenced, but not declared.
> at
> com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.DOMParser.parse(DOMParser.java:257)
> at
> com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(DocumentBuilderImpl.java:338)
> at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder.parse(DocumentBuilder.java:121)
> at HTMLEntityParsingTest.main(HTMLEntityParsingTest.java:40)
>
>
> However, when we change the XSLT output method to the below, the issue does
> not occur.
> <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
>
> Observation:
> It appears that the HTML output contains named entities such as `é`,
> which are not recognized by the XML parser.
>
> Could you please confirm whether this behavior is expected, or if this could
> be considered a bug or limitation in the current implementation?
>
> Releases:
> The issue is consistent in all OpenJDK version(JDK8 and above)
--
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi
