Why is loadXML failing?

[Jambolo]

What could be wrong here??? I get the error "Invalid at the top level of the document"; however, loading the exact same text from a file using load() works! CoInitialize(); CComPtr< IXMLDOMDocument2 > pDocument; pDocument.CoCreateInstance( CLSID_DOMDocument40, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER ); VARIANT_BOOL status; pDocument->loadXML( BSTR( "< ParticleSystem />" ), &status );

[Retsof Nawor]

Without checking this out it may be because of the BSTR constructor you are using. BSTR's are unsigned short pointers, while you are passing in a const char* so a pointer cast is probably done (by the compiler) so two characters from your const char will be going into one character of the BSTR ie could be any character!! I suggest you try using CComBSTR, _bstr_t, or SysAllocString (and a matching free) to create your string to parse...

[Jambolo]

Thanks for your help. I finally found that my problem was a combination of two different problems. 1. Here was the real problem: I was loading (as binary) a Unicode file that has a BOM (byte-order mark) at the front of the file. Then I passed the text to loadXML. Apparently, loadXML can't handle Unicode special characters. I consider this a bug in loadXML. 2. In order to test loadXML, I was creating a BSTR like this: BSTR( "< ParticleSystem />" ); Like you said, the constructor was not converting the string to a Unicode string as I expected it to do. loadXML was able to parse this: BSTR( L"< ParticleSystem />" );

[Steve S]

If it's any consolation, I've hit that first problem too. My solution was to provide an IStream implementation that ate the BOM from it's input if present; it used memory mapped files so didn't ever call ReadFile... :-) Steve S

[Michael Dunn]

Jambolo wrote: BSTR( L"< ParticleSystem />" ); That is still not correct, you need to make a real BSTR or use a wrapper class like _bstr_t --Mike-- Ericahist | Homepage | RightClick-Encrypt | 1ClickPicGrabber CP SearchBar v2.0.2 released

[Jambolo]

Michael Dunn wrote: Jambolo wrote: BSTR( L"< ParticleSystem />" ); That is still not correct, you need to make a real BSTR or use a wrapper class like _bstr_t Well, it worked just fine, so I'm not convinced. Regardless, I am using CComBSTR for the real code, but I will keep that in mind for next time.