[XML-SIG] Skipped entities under SAX

[Walter Dörwald]

Derek Fountain wrote:
> I've been exploring the PyXML SAX parser, and I've come across the handler for 
> skipped entities. i.e. the skippedEntity method in the ContentHandler object.
> 
> Puzzlement here. What exactly is a skipped entity? It's not mentioned in the 
> XML spec, as far as I can see. The name suggests that it's an entity which 
> the parser comes across and doesn't know how to handle, so it passes over it. 
> Sort of:
> 
>  This odd &wierdthing; in the text
> 
> where the weirdthing entity isn't declared.
> 
> I'm only guessing the above, and it seems that the expat parser doesn't 
> entertain such ideas. AFAICT, if it comes across an entity which it doesn't 
> recognise, it throws an error.
> 
> So what is a skipped entity, and when would I receive a call to the 
> skippedEntity method in my SAX handler?

For ExpatParser you can overwrite reset like this:

    class ExpatParser(expatreader.ExpatParser):
       def reset(self):
          expatreader.ExpatParser.reset(self)
          self._parser.UseForeignDTD(True)

Before parsing you have to call:

    parser.setFeature(handler.feature_external_ges, False)

Then ExpatParser will pass entity references to skippedEntity().

Bye,
    Walter Dörwald