How to validate XML against XSD 1.1 in Java?

Question

What is the best way to validate XML files against XML Schema 1.1 in Java?

I took the code from this tutorial and changed the line where it looks up the factory to use XML Schema 1.1 as I have seen in this code example from the Xerces FAQ.

This is my code:

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import javax.xml.validation.Schema;
import javax.xml.validation.SchemaFactory;
import javax.xml.validation.Validator;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

public class XSDValidator {
    private static void validateFile(File xmlFile, File xsdFile) throws SAXException, IOException
    {
        // 1. Lookup a factory for the W3C XML Schema language
        SchemaFactory factory = SchemaFactory.newInstance("http://www.w3.org/XML/XMLSchema/v1.1");
        // SchemaFactory factory = SchemaFactory.newInstance(XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI);

        // 2. Compile the schema.
        File schemaLocation = xsdFile;
        Schema schema = factory.newSchema(schemaLocation);

        // 3. Get a validator from the schema.
        Validator validator = schema.newValidator();

        // 4. Parse the document you want to check.
        Source source = new StreamSource(xmlFile);

        // 5. Check the document
        try
        {
            validator.validate(source);
            System.out.println(xmlFile.getName() + " is valid.");
        }
        catch (SAXException ex)
        {
            System.out.println(xmlFile.getName() + " is not valid because ");
            System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
        }
    }
}

The code throws this exception:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No SchemaFactory that implements the schema language specified by: http://www.w3.org/XML/XMLSchema/v1.1 could be loaded

As I see it I have exactly the same imports as the code snippet in the Xerces FAQ. I even tried to add Xerces to my Maven dependencies but that didn't help either.

Cheers :)

Answer 1

I don't think you can use the JAXP service mechanism to search for an XSD 1.1 processor. Load Saxon or Xerces in the normal way, and then enable XSD 1.1 processing. For Saxon this is done using

SchemaFactory.setProperty("http://saxon.sf.net/feature/xsd-version", "1.1")

UPDATE 2021-09-04 In recent Saxon releases, XSD 1.1 is the default, and no special property needs to be set to enable it.