This data type provides a catalog of resource locations (such as DTDs and XML entities), based on the OASIS "Open Catalog" standard. The catalog entries are used both for Entity resolution and URI resolution, in accordance with the EntityResolver and URIResolver interfaces as defined in the Java API for XML Processing Specification.

Resource locations can be specified either in-line or in external catalog file(s), or both. In order to use an external catalog file, the xml-commons resolver library ("resolver.jar") must be in your classpath. External catalog files may be either plain text format or XML format. If the xml-commons resolver library is not found in the classpath, external catalog files, specified in <catalogpath> paths, will be ignored and a warning will be logged. In this case, however, processing of inline entries will proceed normally.

Currently, only <dtd> and <entity> elements may be specified inline; these correspond to OASIS catalog entry types PUBLIC and URI respectively.

The following is a usage example:

Tasks wishing to use <xmlcatalog> must provide a method called createXMLCatalog which returns an instance of XMLCatalog. Nested DTD and entity definitions are handled by the XMLCatalog object and must be labeled dtd and entity respectively.

The following is a description of the resolution algorithm: entities/URIs/dtds are looked up in each of the following contexts, stopping when a valid and readable resource is found:

1. In the local filesystem
2. In the classpath
3. Using the Apache xml-commons resolver (if it is available)
4. In URL-space

See XMLValidateTask for an example of a task that has integrated support for XMLCatalogs.

Possible future extension could provide for additional OASIS entry types to be specified inline.