Xml not parsing String as input with sax

I have a string input from which I need to extract simple information, here is the sample xml (from mkyong):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<company>
    <staff>
        <firstname>yong</firstname>
        <lastname>mook kim</lastname>
        <nickname>mkyong</nickname>
        <salary>100000</salary>
    </staff>
    <staff>
        <firstname>low</firstname>
        <lastname>yin fong</lastname>
        <nickname>fong fong</nickname>
        <salary>200000</salary>
    </staff>
</company>

How I parse it within my code (I have a field String name in my class) :

public String getNameFromXml(String xml) {
        try {

            SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
            SAXParser saxParser = factory.newSAXParser();
            DefaultHandler handler = new DefaultHandler() {

                boolean firstName = false;

                public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes attributes) throws SAXException {

                    if (qName.equalsIgnoreCase("firstname")) {
                        firstName = true;
                    }
                }

                public void characters(char ch[], int start, int length) throws SAXException {

                    if (firstName) {
                        name = new String(ch, start, length);
                        System.out.println("First name is : " + name);
                        firstName = false;
                    }

                }

            };

            saxParser.parse(xml.toString(), handler);

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return name;
    }

I'm getting a java.io.FileNotFoundException and I see that it's trying to find a file myprojectpath + th