Why must the entity name immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference appearing for the XML?

Question

I have a XML file called /NewFile.xml in the D: directory. The XML file contains the following details:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project>

<logindetails id="1001">
		<url>https:xxx</url>
        <username>xxx</username>
        <password>xxx</password>
</logindetails >

<kpi id="1001">
		<id_r>reports</id_r>
		<id_e>extranet</id_e>
		<id_pr>ext-pr</id_pr>
</kpi>	

<prkpi id="1001">
        <id_1>ext-pr-backlog-age</id_1>
		<id_2>ext-timetoassign-prs</id_2>
		<id_3>ext-timetodeliver-prs</id_3>
		<id_4>ext-timetoresolve-prs</id_4>
		<id_5>ext-new-prs</id_5>

</prkpi>

<filtersection id="1001">
		<visualizationId>Day,Week,Month,Quarter,Semester,Year,RD Tech Group,ICC,Center,Software Pack,Product,Project,Customer PRs,Severity,Priority</visualizationId>
		<projectId>dev/v4.3/r4/e12sqq,BATS,1523 Business IAD & Business CPE,[CoCo2M],VQM</projectId>
</filtersection>

</project>

The following code I'm running in eclipse as follows:

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Properties;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;


import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.JavascriptExecutor;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.Select;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

public class A {

    
    static Properties p= new Properties();
    String url=p.getProperty("url");
    private static Logger Log = Logger.getLogger(A.class.getName());

    public static void main(String[] args) throws SAXException, IOException, ParserConfigurationException, InterruptedException {
    	WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
        A a = new A();
      
    	Actions actions = new Actions(driver);
    	DOMConfigurator.configure("src/log4j.xml");
        String url = a.readXML("logindetails","url");
        String username = a.readXML("logindetails","username");
        String password = a.readXML("logindetails","password");
     
        //use username for webdriver specific actions
        Log.info("Sign in to the OneReports website");
        driver.manage().window().maximize();
        driver.get(url);
        Thread.sleep(5000);
        Log.info("Enter Username");
        driver.findElement(By.id("loginUsername")).sendKeys(username);
        Log.info("Enter Password");
        driver.findElement(By.id("loginPassword")).sendKeys(password); 
        //submit
        Log.info("Submitting login details");
        waitforElement(driver,120 , "//*[@id='submit']");
        driver.findElement(By.id("submit")).submit();
        Thread.sleep(5000);

    	 	Log.info("Clicking on Reports link");
	        String id_r = a.readXML("kpi","id_r");
	        WebElement menuHoverLink = driver.findElement(By.id(id_r));
 		   	actions.moveToElement(menuHoverLink).perform();
 		   	Thread.sleep(6000);
 		   
 		   String id_e = a.readXML("kpi","id_e");
 		   WebElement menuHoverLink1 = driver.findElement(By.id(id_e));
 		   actions.moveToElement(menuHoverLink1).perform();
		   Thread.sleep(6000);
		   
		   String id_pr = a.readXML("kpi","id_pr");
		   WebElement menuHoverLink2 = driver.findElement(By.id(id_pr));
		   actions.moveToElement(menuHoverLink2).perform();
		   Thread.sleep(6000);
		   
		   String id_1 = a.readXML("prkpi","id_1");
		   WebElement menuHoverLink3 = driver.findElement(By.id(id_1));
		   actions.moveToElement(menuHoverLink3).click().perform();
		   Thread.sleep(6000);

    
		  
    }

	private static void waitforElement(WebDriver driver, int i, String string) {
		// TODO Auto-generated method stub
		
	}

	public String readXML(String searchelement,String tag) throws SAXException, IOException, ParserConfigurationException{
        String ele = null;
        File fXmlFile = new File("D://NewFile.xml");
        DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document doc = dBuilder.parse(fXmlFile);
        doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
        NodeList nList = doc.getElementsByTagName(searchelement);
        Node nNode = nList.item(0);
        if (nNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
        	Element eElement = (Element) nNode;
            ele=eElement.getElementsByTagName(tag).item(0).getTextContent();
        }
        return ele;
    }

}

When running this code I'm getting the following error in the console as follows:

Fatal Error] NewFile.xml:27:57: The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference.
Exception in thread "main" org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; systemId: file:/D:/NewFile.xml; lineNumber: 27; columnNumber: 57; The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference.
	at org.apache.xerces.parsers.DOMParser.parse(Unknown Source)
	at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
	at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder.parse(Unknown Source)
	at A.readXML(A.java:94)
	at A.main(A.java:40)

Please give me a solution for this issue..

Answer 1

You have an unescaped & in there, just like @chrylis says the message says. ;-)

Change Business IAD & Business CPE to Business IAD & Business CPE.

See also: What characters do I need to escape in XML documents?

Answer 2

You cannot use an ampersand (&) directly in an XML file. Change this:

1523 Business IAD & Business CPE

to this:

1523 Business IAD & Business CPE

The reason for the somewhat confusing error message is that when an XML processor sees &, it expects it to be immediately followed by an entity name or a "character reference", such as &, <, &#x225b, etc. So it saw the & in your name and didn't guess that you had just used it incorrectly.