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jsfjsf-2faceletshtml-entities

Error Parsing /page.xhtml: Error Traced[line: 42] The entity "nbsp" was referenced, but not declared

I'd like to use non breaking spaces in my JSF page. I know, in plain HTML I could use   for this and this works fine. However, when I put those   in a Facelets page, then it errors as follows:

Error Parsing /page.xhtml: Error Traced[line: 42] The entity "nbsp" was referenced, but not declared.

How is this caused and how can I solve it?

Solution

  • Facelets is a XML based view technology. XML has only five predefined entities. The   is not among them. It works only when used in plain HTML or in legacy JSP (note: it doesn't work in JSPX as that's also XML based!).

    To fix this, you either need to declare the entity yourself in the doctype of the very XHTML file containing the   entity,

    <!DOCTYPE html [
    <!ENTITY nbsp "&#160;"> 
]>

    or, better, use the (hexa)decimal notation instead:

    &#xA0; or &#160;

    In an average IDE it should be trivial to perform a "find and replace in all files" and replace every occurrence of &nbsp; by &#xA0;.