# Best Practices

Rules which enforce generally accepted best practices.
Table of Contents

## MissingEncoding

Since: PMD 7.0.0

Priority: Medium (3)

When the character encoding is missing from the XML declaration, the parser may produce garbled text.

This is completely dependent on how the parser is set up and the content of the XML file, so it may be hard to reproduce.

Providing an explicit encoding ensures accurate and consistent parsing.

This rule is defined by the following XPath expression:

    /document[@XmlEncoding = ""]

Use this rule by referencing it:

    <rule ref="category/xml/bestpractices.xml/MissingEncoding" />