1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 2<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 3<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="/favicon.ico" /><style type="text/css"> 4TD {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica} 5BODY {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica; margin-top: 2em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 0em} 6H1 {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica} 7H2 {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica} 8H3 {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica} 9A:link, A:visited, A:active { text-decoration: underline } 10</style><title>The parser interfaces</title></head><body bgcolor="#8b7765" text="#000000" link="#a06060" vlink="#000000"><table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center"><tr><td width="120"><a href="http://swpat.ffii.org/"><img src="epatents.png" alt="Action against software patents" 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href="http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/dist/XML-LibXML">Perl bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://libxmlplusplus.sourceforge.net/">C++ bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-xmlphp.php#Heading4">PHP bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/libxml2-pas/">Pascal bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://libxml.rubyforge.org/">Ruby bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://tclxml.sourceforge.net/">Tcl bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml2">Bug Tracker</a></li></ul></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td><td valign="top" bgcolor="#8b7765"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%"><tr><td><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%" bgcolor="#000000"><tr><td><table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" width="100%"><tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd"><p>This section is directly intended to help programmers getting bootstrapped 11using the XML tollkit from the C language. It is not intended to be 12extensive. I hope the automatically generated documents will provide the 13completeness required, but as a separate set of documents. The interfaces of 14the XML parser are by principle low level, Those interested in a higher level 15API should <a href="#DOM">look at DOM</a>.</p><p>The <a href="html/libxml-parser.html">parser interfaces for XML</a> are 16separated from the <a href="html/libxml-htmlparser.html">HTML parser 17interfaces</a>. Let's have a look at how the XML parser can be called:</p><h3><a name="Invoking" id="Invoking">Invoking the parser : the pull method</a></h3><p>Usually, the first thing to do is to read an XML input. The parser accepts 18documents either from in-memory strings or from files. The functions are 19defined in "parser.h":</p><dl> 20 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseMemory(char *buffer, int size);</code></dt> 21 <dd><p>Parse a null-terminated string containing the document.</p> 22 </dd> 23</dl><dl> 24 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseFile(const char *filename);</code></dt> 25 <dd><p>Parse an XML document contained in a (possibly compressed) 26 file.</p> 27 </dd> 28</dl><p>The parser returns a pointer to the document structure (or NULL in case of 29failure).</p><h3 id="Invoking1">Invoking the parser: the push method</h3><p>In order for the application to keep the control when the document is 30being fetched (which is common for GUI based programs) libxml2 provides a 31push interface, too, as of version 1.8.3. Here are the interface 32functions:</p><pre>xmlParserCtxtPtr xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(xmlSAXHandlerPtr sax, 33 void *user_data, 34 const char *chunk, 35 int size, 36 const char *filename); 37int xmlParseChunk (xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt, 38 const char *chunk, 39 int size, 40 int terminate);</pre><p>and here is a simple example showing how to use the interface:</p><pre> FILE *f; 41 42 f = fopen(filename, "r"); 43 if (f != NULL) { 44 int res, size = 1024; 45 char chars[1024]; 46 xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt; 47 48 res = fread(chars, 1, 4, f); 49 if (res > 0) { 50 ctxt = xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(NULL, NULL, 51 chars, res, filename); 52 while ((res = fread(chars, 1, size, f)) > 0) { 53 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, res, 0); 54 } 55 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, 0, 1); 56 doc = ctxt->myDoc; 57 xmlFreeParserCtxt(ctxt); 58 } 59 }</pre><p>The HTML parser embedded into libxml2 also has a push interface; the 60functions are just prefixed by "html" rather than "xml".</p><h3 id="Invoking2">Invoking the parser: the SAX interface</h3><p>The tree-building interface makes the parser memory-hungry, first loading 61the document in memory and then building the tree itself. Reading a document 62without building the tree is possible using the SAX interfaces (see SAX.h and 63<a href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">James 64Henstridge's documentation</a>). Note also that the push interface can be 65limited to SAX: just use the two first arguments of 66<code>xmlCreatePushParserCtxt()</code>.</p><h3><a name="Building" id="Building">Building a tree from scratch</a></h3><p>The other way to get an XML tree in memory is by building it. Basically 67there is a set of functions dedicated to building new elements. (These are 68also described in <libxml/tree.h>.) For example, here is a piece of 69code that produces the XML document used in the previous examples:</p><pre> #include <libxml/tree.h> 70 xmlDocPtr doc; 71 xmlNodePtr tree, subtree; 72 73 doc = xmlNewDoc("1.0"); 74 doc->children = xmlNewDocNode(doc, NULL, "EXAMPLE", NULL); 75 xmlSetProp(doc->children, "prop1", "gnome is great"); 76 xmlSetProp(doc->children, "prop2", "& linux too"); 77 tree = xmlNewChild(doc->children, NULL, "head", NULL); 78 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "Welcome to Gnome"); 79 tree = xmlNewChild(doc->children, NULL, "chapter", NULL); 80 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "The Linux adventure"); 81 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "p", "bla bla bla ..."); 82 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "image", NULL); 83 xmlSetProp(subtree, "href", "linus.gif");</pre><p>Not really rocket science ...</p><h3><a name="Traversing" id="Traversing">Traversing the tree</a></h3><p>Basically by <a href="html/libxml-tree.html">including "tree.h"</a> your 84code has access to the internal structure of all the elements of the tree. 85The names should be somewhat simple like <strong>parent</strong>, 86<strong>children</strong>, <strong>next</strong>, <strong>prev</strong>, 87<strong>properties</strong>, etc... For example, still with the previous 88example:</p><pre><code>doc->children->children->children</code></pre><p>points to the title element,</p><pre>doc->children->children->next->children->children</pre><p>points to the text node containing the chapter title "The Linux 89adventure".</p><p><strong>NOTE</strong>: XML allows <em>PI</em>s and <em>comments</em> to be 90present before the document root, so <code>doc->children</code> may point 91to an element which is not the document Root Element; a function 92<code>xmlDocGetRootElement()</code> was added for this purpose.</p><h3><a name="Modifying" id="Modifying">Modifying the tree</a></h3><p>Functions are provided for reading and writing the document content. Here 93is an excerpt from the <a href="html/libxml-tree.html">tree API</a>:</p><dl> 94 <dt><code>xmlAttrPtr xmlSetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar *name, const 95 xmlChar *value);</code></dt> 96 <dd><p>This sets (or changes) an attribute carried by an ELEMENT node. 97 The value can be NULL.</p> 98 </dd> 99</dl><dl> 100 <dt><code>const xmlChar *xmlGetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar 101 *name);</code></dt> 102 <dd><p>This function returns a pointer to new copy of the property 103 content. Note that the user must deallocate the result.</p> 104 </dd> 105</dl><p>Two functions are provided for reading and writing the text associated 106with elements:</p><dl> 107 <dt><code>xmlNodePtr xmlStringGetNodeList(xmlDocPtr doc, const xmlChar 108 *value);</code></dt> 109 <dd><p>This function takes an "external" string and converts it to one 110 text node or possibly to a list of entity and text nodes. All 111 non-predefined entity references like &Gnome; will be stored 112 internally as entity nodes, hence the result of the function may not be 113 a single node.</p> 114 </dd> 115</dl><dl> 116 <dt><code>xmlChar *xmlNodeListGetString(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNodePtr list, int 117 inLine);</code></dt> 118 <dd><p>This function is the inverse of 119 <code>xmlStringGetNodeList()</code>. It generates a new string 120 containing the content of the text and entity nodes. Note the extra 121 argument inLine. If this argument is set to 1, the function will expand 122 entity references. For example, instead of returning the &Gnome; 123 XML encoding in the string, it will substitute it with its value (say, 124 "GNU Network Object Model Environment").</p> 125 </dd> 126</dl><h3><a name="Saving" id="Saving">Saving a tree</a></h3><p>Basically 3 options are possible:</p><dl> 127 <dt><code>void xmlDocDumpMemory(xmlDocPtr cur, xmlChar**mem, int 128 *size);</code></dt> 129 <dd><p>Returns a buffer into which the document has been saved.</p> 130 </dd> 131</dl><dl> 132 <dt><code>extern void xmlDocDump(FILE *f, xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt> 133 <dd><p>Dumps a document to an open file descriptor.</p> 134 </dd> 135</dl><dl> 136 <dt><code>int xmlSaveFile(const char *filename, xmlDocPtr cur);</code></dt> 137 <dd><p>Saves the document to a file. In this case, the compression 138 interface is triggered if it has been turned on.</p> 139 </dd> 140</dl><h3><a name="Compressio" id="Compressio">Compression</a></h3><p>The library transparently handles compression when doing file-based 141accesses. The level of compression on saves can be turned on either globally 142or individually for one file:</p><dl> 143 <dt><code>int xmlGetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt> 144 <dd><p>Gets the document compression ratio (0-9).</p> 145 </dd> 146</dl><dl> 147 <dt><code>void xmlSetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc, int mode);</code></dt> 148 <dd><p>Sets the document compression ratio.</p> 149 </dd> 150</dl><dl> 151 <dt><code>int xmlGetCompressMode(void);</code></dt> 152 <dd><p>Gets the default compression ratio.</p> 153 </dd> 154</dl><dl> 155 <dt><code>void xmlSetCompressMode(int mode);</code></dt> 156 <dd><p>Sets the default compression ratio.</p> 157 </dd> 158</dl><p><a href="bugs.html">Daniel Veillard</a></p></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></body></html> 159
