How to throw Java SAXParseException for bad XML documents in Try/Catch

Question

I am trying to parse elements out of a XML document. It works for most of them, but sometimes I may get a fatal error because I am given a badly formatted XML document. I want to ignore those cases when I get those XML documents by throwing an exception for it. The console gives me a SAXParseException , but when I call for it in the catch block, it is unable to. I wanted to do it in the JSP scriplet, but it will never be thrown since the scriplet is not actively searching for the SAXException .

I though the solution is to create a method to throw the exception, but again, it says that the SAXParseException will never be thrown in the try / catch statement. What is happening here?

public String parseElementsByTagNameInXML(Document doc, String tagName) throws SAXParseException
        {
            try{
                return doc.getElementsByTagName(tagName).item(0).getTextContent();
        }
        catch(SAXParseException e){
             System.out.println("Failure on Generating MessageID: " + e);
        }

        catch(NullPointerException e){
            //will not spam the console with nullpointexception errors
        }
        catch(Exception e){
            System.out.println("Failure on Generating MessageID: " + e);
        }
            return "";
        }

Answer 1

Your method define that it will throws SAXParseException but your try catch is catching and consuming it without tossing it back up the line. Instead, I think it's printing it out. Try removing that catch and the exception catch, then if it fail by SAXParseException, it'll throw it to whoever call that method.