## org.w3c.dom.ls
Interface DOMEntityResolver

public interface DOMEntityResolver

DOM Level 3 WD Experimental: The DOM Level 3 specification is at the stage of Working Draft, which represents work in progress and thus may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. `DOMEntityResolver` Provides a way for applications to redirect references to external entities.

Applications needing to implement customized handling for external entities must implement this interface and register their implementation by setting the `entityResolver` attribute of the `DOMBuilder`.

The `DOMBuilder` will then allow the application to intercept any external entities (including the external DTD subset and external parameter entities) before including them.

Many DOM applications will not need to implement this interface, but it will be especially useful for applications that build XML documents from databases or other specialized input sources, or for applications that use URNs.

Note: `DOMEntityResolver` is based on the SAX2 [SAX] `EntityResolver` interface.

See also the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Load and Save Specification.

Method Summary
`DOMInputSource` `resolveEntity(java.lang.String publicId, java.lang.String systemId, java.lang.String baseURI)` Allow the application to resolve external entities.

Method Detail

### resolveEntity

    public DOMInputSource resolveEntity(java.lang.String publicId,
                                        java.lang.String systemId,
                                        java.lang.String baseURI)

  Allow the application to resolve external entities.
  The `DOMBuilder` will call this method before opening any external entity except the top-level document entity (including the external DTD subset, external entities referenced within the DTD, and external entities referenced within the document element); the application may request that the `DOMBuilder` resolve the entity itself, that it use an alternative URI, or that it use an entirely different input source.
  Application writers can use this method to redirect external system identifiers to secure and/or local URIs, to look up public identifiers in a catalogue, or to read an entity from a database or other input source (including, for example, a dialog box).
  If the system identifier is a URI, the `DOMBuilder` must resolve it fully before reporting it to the application through this interface.

  Note: See issue #4. An alternative would be to pass the URI out without resolving it, and to provide a base as an additional parameter. SAX resolves URIs first, and does not provide a base.

  Parameters:
    `publicId` - The public identifier of the external entity being referenced, or `null` if none was supplied.
    `systemId` - The system identifier, a URI reference [IETF RFC 2396], of the external entity being referenced exactly as written in the source.
    `baseURI` - The absolute base URI of the resource being parsed, or `null` if there is no base URI.
  Returns:
    A `DOMInputSource` object describing the new input source, or `null` to request that the parser open a regular URI connection to the system identifier.

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