cvc-elt 1 Cannot find the declaration of element MyElement

Question

I m trying to validate a really simple xml using xsd  but for some reason I get this error  I ll really appreciate if someone can explain me why   XML File   lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt    lt MyElement gt A lt  MyElement gt    XSD File   lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  UTF-8   gt   lt schema xmlns  http   www w3 org 2001 XMLSchema          targetNamespace  http   www example org Test          xmlns tns  http   www example org Test          elementFormDefault  qualified  gt        lt simpleType name  MyType  gt           lt restriction base  string  gt  lt  restriction gt       lt  simpleType gt        lt element name  MyElement  type  tns MyType  gt  lt  element gt   lt  schema gt

User · Answer

I had this error for my XXX element and it was because my XSD was wrongly formatted according to javax.xml.bind v2.2.11 . I think it's using an older XSD format but I didn't bother to confirm.

My initial wrong XSD was alike the following:

<xs:element name="Document" type="Document"/>
...
<xs:complexType name="Document">
    <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element name="XXX" type="XXX_TYPE"/>
    </xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>

The good XSD format for my migration to succeed was the following:

<xs:element name="Document">
    <xs:complexType>
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element ref="XXX"/>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>        
</xs:element>
...
<xs:element name="XXX" type="XXX_TYPE"/>

And so on for every similar XSD nodes.

User · Answer

Your schema is for its target namespace http   www example org Test so it defines an element with name MyElement in that target namespace http   www example org Test  Your instance document however has an element with name MyElement in no namespace  That is why the validating parser tells you it can t find a declaration for that element  you haven t provided a schema for elements in no namespace   You either need to change the schema to not use a target namespace at all or you need to change the instance to use e g   lt MyElement xmlns  http   www example org Test  gt A lt  MyElement gt

User · Answer

After making the change suggested above by Martin  I was still getting the same error  I had to make an additional change to my parsing code  I was parsing the XML file via a DocumentBuilder as shown in the oracle docs  https   docs oracle com javase 7 docs api javax xml validation package-summary html    parse an XML document into a DOM tree DocumentBuilder parser   DocumentBuilderFactory newInstance   newDocumentBuilder    Document document   parser parse new File  quot example xml quot      The problem was that DocumentBuilder is not namespace aware by default  The following additional change resolved the issue     parse an XML document into a DOM tree DocumentBuilderFactory dmfactory   DocumentBuilderFactory newInstance    dmfactory setNamespaceAware true    DocumentBuilder parser   dmfactory newDocumentBuilder    Document document   parser parse new File  quot example xml quot

User · Answer

I got this same error working in Eclipse with Maven with the additional information  schema reference 4  Failed to read schema document  https   maven apache org xsd maven-4 0 0 xsd   because 1  could not find the document  2  the document could not be read  3  the root element of the document is not  lt xsd schema gt     This was after copying in a new controller and it s interface from a Thymeleaf example  Honestly  no matter how careful I am I still am at a loss to understand how one is expected to figure this out  On a  lucky  guess I right clicked the project  clicked Maven and Update Project which cleared up the issue

[xsd] cvc-elt.1: Cannot find the declaration of element 'MyElement'

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