Can I ignore invalid XML character using Scala's builtin xml handlers?

Question

I have an xml file(from federal government's data.gov) which I'm trying to read with scala's xml handlers.

val loadnode = scala.xml.XML.loadFile(filename) 

Apparently, there is an invalid xml character. Is there an option to just ignore invalid characters? or is my only option to clean it up first?

org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: An invalid XML character (Unicode: 0x12) was found in the element content of the document.

Ruby's nokogiri was able to parse it with the invalid character.

Answer 1

To expand on @huynhjl's answer: the InputStream filter is dangerous if you have multi-byte characters, for example in UTF-8 encoded text. Instead, use a character oriented filter: FilterReader. Or if the file is small enough, load into a String and replace the characters there.

scala> val origXml = "<?xml version='1.1'?><root>\u0012</root>"                                          
origXml: java.lang.String = <?xml version='1.1'?><root></root>

scala> val cleanXml = xml flatMap { 
   case x if Character.isISOControl(x) => "&#x" + Integer.toHexString(x) + ";"
   case x => Seq(x) 
}
cleanXml: String = <?xml version='1.1'?><root>&#x12;</root>

scala> scala.xml.XML.loadString(cleanXml) 
res14: scala.xml.Elem = <root></root>