XML : List inside Java XML Properties

I want to store a list of key-value pairs as values to specific key in a properties xml file.

Consider following example:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>  <!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd">  <properties>      <entry key="led.color">         <color key="r">0</color>         <color key="g">100</color>         <color key="b">0</color>      </entry>  </properties>    

My initial approach was to retrieve the value of led.color as String and convert it to a Map. But the retrival failed with following exception:

  Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; lineNumber: 22; columnNumber: 20; Element type "color" must be declared.    

This happens because color is not declared in the DTD and hence, the validation fails.

Is there any build-in way to handle such task or a way to avoid the vaildation of this specific value?