Ignoring whitespaces, carriage return and tab characters between elements when parsing an XML file

I want to parse an XML file with SAX Xerces C++ while ignoring any white spaces, carriage return and tab characters that are NOT within element attributes or within a start and end element. I开发者_如何学Go want to ignore white spaces, carriage returns and tabs that would be between tags.

For instance in following XML file:

<tag1 attr1="val 1"><tag2>my text here</tag2>

[many white spaces here] </tag1>

I want to preserve white spaces within the strings 'val 1', 'my text here', but ignore the carriage return, and the many whitespace characters between the ending </tag2> and the ending </tag1>.

I tried to use a boolean flag 'withinElement' set to true in startElement() and set to false in endElement() methods, but that does not prevent me to ignore whitespace characters between </tag2> and </tag1> for instance.

Should that be done in the characters() method? and how to do it as there does not seem to be a way to know where we are precisely when the characters() method is invoked?

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You could ask the parser to validate the XML file and then you will get all the ignorable whitespaces through the method ignorableWhitespace and the "good" whitespaces through characters.