Every XML document we work on should be formatted correctly, saved with the right encoding, etc.
A classic case is the message “Content is not allowed in prolog” (SAXParseException).
Let’s edit the file by hand with a (hexadecimal) editor and remove “ef bb bf” at the top.
Since we are using Java much better to put a small work-around of just two lines of code :
Matcher matcher = (Pattern.compile("^([\\W]+)<")).matcher( xmlString.trim() );
xmlString = matcher.replaceFirst("<");
This is before passing it to our SAXBuilder object.
SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder();
Document document = builder.build(new StringReader(xmlString));