Certain methods may only be called when the writer is in certain states. For example, most of the writing methods, like START-ELEMENT, can only be called while WRITE-STATUS is neither SAX-WRITE-IDLE nor SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE.

The following table describes the invalid method calls WRITE-STATUS vs. methods and attributes.

Table 1. Valid method calls by WRITE-STATUS value
Method Invalid for these WRITE-STATUS values
SET-OUTPUT-DESTINATION SAX-WRITE-BEGIN, SAX-WRITE-TAG, SAX-WRITE-CONTENT, SAX-WRITE-ELEMENT, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
START-DOCUMENT SAX-WRITE-BEGIN, SAX-WRITE-TAG, SAX-WRITE-CONTENT, SAX-WRITE-ELEMENT, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
END-DOCUMENT SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
START-ELEMENT SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
END-ELEMENT SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
WRITE-CHARACTERS SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
WRITE-EMPTY-ELEMENT SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
WRITE-DATA-ELEMENT SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
WRITE-FRAGMENT SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
WRITE-PROCESSING-INSTRUCTION SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
WRITE-COMMENT SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-BEGIN, SAX-WRITE-CONTENT, SAX-WRITE-ELEMENT, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
INSERT-ATTRIBUTE SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-BEGIN, SAX-WRITE-CONTENT, SAX-WRITE-ELEMENT, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
DECLARE-NAMESPACE SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-BEGIN, SAX-WRITE-CONTENT, SAX-WRITE-ELEMENT, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
WRITE-EXTERNAL-DTD SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-TAG, SAX-WRITE-CONTENT, SAX-WRITE-ELEMENT, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
WRITE-ENTITY-REF SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
WRITE-CDATA SAX-WRITE-IDLE, SAX-WRITE-COMPLETE, SAX-WRITE-ERROR
RESET None