xmltutorial.xml revision 4c3bb7d8a20c5262882af7fcd41afe3b3d482f12
1<?xml version="1.0"?>
2<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
3    "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd" [
4<!ENTITY KEYWORD SYSTEM "includekeyword.c">
5<!ENTITY XPATH SYSTEM "includexpath.c">
6<!ENTITY STORY SYSTEM "includestory.xml">
7<!ENTITY ADDKEYWORD SYSTEM "includeaddkeyword.c">
8<!ENTITY ADDATTRIBUTE SYSTEM "includeaddattribute.c">
9<!ENTITY GETATTRIBUTE SYSTEM "includegetattribute.c">
10<!ENTITY CONVERT SYSTEM "includeconvert.c">
11]>
12<article lang="en">
13  <articleinfo>
14    <title>Libxml Tutorial</title>
15    <author>
16      <firstname>John</firstname>
17      <surname>Fleck</surname>
18      <email>jfleck@inkstain.net</email>
19    </author>
20    <copyright>
21      <year>2002, 2003</year>
22      <holder>John Fleck</holder>
23    </copyright>
24    <revhistory>
25      <revision>
26	<revnumber>1</revnumber>
27	<date>June 4, 2002</date>
28	<revremark>Initial draft</revremark>
29      </revision>
30      <revision>
31	<revnumber>2</revnumber>
32	<date>June 12, 2002</date>
33	<revremark>retrieving attribute value added</revremark>
34      </revision>
35      <revision>
36	<revnumber>3</revnumber>
37	<date>Aug. 31, 2002</date>
38	<revremark>freeing memory fix</revremark>
39      </revision>
40      <revision>
41	<revnumber>4</revnumber>
42	<date>Nov. 10, 2002</date>
43	<revremark>encoding discussion added</revremark>
44      </revision>
45      <revision>
46	<revnumber>5</revnumber>
47	<date>Dec. 15, 2002</date>
48	<revremark>more memory freeing changes</revremark>
49      </revision>
50      <revision>
51	<revnumber>6</revnumber>
52	<date>Jan. 26. 2003</date>
53	<revremark>add index</revremark>
54      </revision>
55      <revision>
56	<revnumber>7</revnumber>
57	<date>April 25, 2003</date>
58	<revremark>add compilation appendix</revremark>
59      </revision>
60      <revision>
61	<revnumber>8</revnumber>
62	<date>July 24, 2003</date>
63	<revremark>add XPath example</revremark>
64      </revision>
65      <revision>
66	<revnumber>9</revnumber>
67	<date>Feb. 14, 2004</date>
68	<revremark>Fix bug in XPath example</revremark>
69      </revision>
70      <revision>
71	<revnumber>7</revnumber>
72	<date>Aug. 24, 2004</date>
73	<revremark>Fix another bug in XPath example</revremark>
74      </revision>
75    </revhistory>
76  </articleinfo>
77  <abstract>
78    <para>Libxml is a freely licensed C language library for handling
79    <acronym>XML</acronym>, portable across a large number of platforms. This
80    tutorial provides examples of its basic functions.</para>
81  </abstract>
82  <sect1 id="introduction">
83    <title>Introduction</title>
84    <para>Libxml is a C language library implementing functions for reading,
85      creating and manipulating <acronym>XML</acronym> data. This tutorial
86    provides example code and explanations of its basic functionality.</para>
87    <para>Libxml and more details about its use are available on <ulink
88									url="http://www.xmlsoft.org/">the project home page</ulink>. Included there is complete <ulink url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-lib.html">
89	<acronym>API</acronym> documentation</ulink>. This tutorial is not meant
90    to substitute for that complete documentation, but to illustrate the
91    functions needed to use the library to perform basic operations.
92<!--
93 Links to
94      other resources can be found in <xref linkend="furtherresources" />.
95-->
96</para>
97    <para>The tutorial is based on a simple <acronym>XML</acronym> application I
98    use for articles I write. The format includes metadata and the body
99    of the article.</para>
100    <para>The example code in this tutorial demonstrates how to:
101      <itemizedlist>
102	<listitem>
103	  <para>Parse the document.</para>
104	</listitem>
105	<listitem>
106	  <para>Extract the text within a specified element.</para>
107	</listitem>
108	<listitem>
109	  <para>Add an element and its content.</para>
110	</listitem>
111	<listitem>
112	  <para>Add an attribute.</para>
113	</listitem>      
114	<listitem>
115	  <para>Extract the value of an attribute.</para>
116	</listitem>
117      </itemizedlist>
118    </para>
119    <para>Full code for the examples is included in the appendices.</para>
120
121  </sect1>
122
123  <sect1 id="xmltutorialdatatypes">
124    <title>Data Types</title>
125    <para><application>Libxml</application> declares a number of data types we
126    will encounter repeatedly, hiding the messy stuff so you do not have to deal
127    with it unless you have some specific need.</para>
128    <para>
129      <variablelist>
130	<varlistentry>
131	  <term><indexterm>
132	      <primary>xmlChar</primary>
133	    </indexterm>
134<ulink
135	  url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLCHAR">xmlChar</ulink></term>
136	  <listitem>
137	    <para>A basic replacement for char, a byte in a UTF-8 encoded
138	    string. If your data uses another encoding, it must be converted to
139	      UTF-8 for use with <application>libxml's</application>
140	      functions. More information on encoding is available on the <ulink
141		url="http://www.xmlsoft.org/encoding.html"><application>libxml</application> encoding support web page</ulink>.</para>
142	  </listitem>
143	</varlistentry>
144	<varlistentry>
145	  <term><indexterm>
146	      <primary>xmlDoc</primary>
147	    </indexterm>
148	    <ulink url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLDOC">xmlDoc</ulink></term>
149	  <listitem>
150	    <para>A structure containing the tree created by a parsed doc. <ulink
151	  url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLDOCPTR">xmlDocPtr</ulink>
152	  is a pointer to the structure.</para>
153	  </listitem>
154	</varlistentry>
155	<varlistentry>
156	  <term><indexterm>
157	      <primary>xmlNodePtr</primary>
158	    </indexterm>
159<ulink
160	  url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLNODEPTR">xmlNodePtr</ulink>
161	    and <ulink url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLNODE">xmlNode</ulink></term>
162	  <listitem>
163	    <para>A structure containing a single node. <ulink
164	  url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLNODEPTR">xmlNodePtr</ulink>
165	  is a pointer to the structure, and is used in traversing the document tree.</para>
166	  </listitem>
167	</varlistentry>
168      </variablelist>
169    </para>
170
171  </sect1>
172
173  <sect1 id="xmltutorialparsing">
174    <title>Parsing the file</title>
175    <para><indexterm id="fileparsing" class="startofrange">
176	<primary>file</primary>
177	<secondary>parsing</secondary>
178      </indexterm>
179Parsing the file requires only the name of the file and a single
180      function call, plus error checking. Full code: <xref
181    linkend="keywordappendix" /></para>
182    <para>
183    <programlisting>
184        <co id="declaredoc" /> xmlDocPtr doc;
185	<co id="declarenode" /> xmlNodePtr cur;
186
187	<co id="parsefile" /> doc = xmlParseFile(docname);
188	
189	<co id="checkparseerror" /> if (doc == NULL ) {
190		fprintf(stderr,"Document not parsed successfully. \n");
191		return;
192	}
193
194	<co id="getrootelement" /> cur = xmlDocGetRootElement(doc);
195	
196	<co id="checkemptyerror" /> if (cur == NULL) {
197		fprintf(stderr,"empty document\n");
198		xmlFreeDoc(doc);
199		return;
200	}
201	
202	<co id="checkroottype" /> if (xmlStrcmp(cur->name, (const xmlChar *) "story")) {
203		fprintf(stderr,"document of the wrong type, root node != story");
204		xmlFreeDoc(doc);
205		return;
206	}
207
208    </programlisting>
209      <calloutlist>
210	<callout arearefs="declaredoc">
211	  <para>Declare the pointer that will point to your parsed document.</para>
212	</callout>
213	<callout arearefs="declarenode">
214	  <para>Declare a node pointer (you'll need this in order to
215	  interact with individual nodes).</para>
216	</callout>
217	<callout arearefs="checkparseerror">
218	  <para>Check to see that the document was successfully parsed. If it
219	    was not, <application>libxml</application> will at this point
220	    register an error and stop. 
221	    <note>
222	      <para><indexterm>
223		  <primary>encoding</primary>
224		</indexterm>
225One common example of an error at this point is improper
226	    handling of encoding. The <acronym>XML</acronym> standard requires
227	    documents stored with an encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 to
228	    contain an explicit declaration of their encoding. If the
229	    declaration is there, <application>libxml</application> will
230	    automatically perform the necessary conversion to UTF-8 for
231		you. More information on <acronym>XML's</acronym> encoding
232		requirements is contained in the <ulink
233		  url="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#charencoding">standard</ulink>.</para>
234	    </note>
235	  </para>
236	</callout>
237	<callout arearefs="getrootelement">
238	  <para>Retrieve the document's root element.</para>
239	</callout>
240	<callout arearefs="checkemptyerror">
241	  <para>Check to make sure the document actually contains something.</para>
242	</callout>
243	<callout arearefs="checkroottype">
244	  <para>In our case, we need to make sure the document is the right
245	  type. &quot;story&quot; is the root type of the documents used in this
246	  tutorial.</para>
247	</callout>
248      </calloutlist>
249      <indexterm startref="fileparsing" class="endofrange" />
250    </para>
251  </sect1>
252
253  <sect1 id="xmltutorialgettext">
254    <title>Retrieving Element Content</title>
255    <para><indexterm>
256	<primary>element</primary>
257	<secondary>retrieving content</secondary>
258      </indexterm>
259Retrieving the content of an element involves traversing the document
260    tree until you find what you are looking for. In this case, we are looking
261    for an element called &quot;keyword&quot; contained within element called &quot;story&quot;. The
262    process to find the node we are interested in involves tediously walking the
263    tree. We assume you already have an xmlDocPtr called <varname>doc</varname>
264    and an xmlNodPtr called <varname>cur</varname>.</para>
265
266    <para>
267      <programlisting>
268	<co id="getchildnode" />cur = cur->xmlChildrenNode;
269	<co id="huntstoryinfo" />while (cur != NULL) {
270		if ((!xmlStrcmp(cur->name, (const xmlChar *)"storyinfo"))){
271			parseStory (doc, cur);
272		}
273		 
274	cur = cur->next;
275	}
276      </programlisting>
277
278      <calloutlist>
279	<callout arearefs="getchildnode">
280	  <para>Get the first child node of <varname>cur</varname>. At this
281	    point, <varname>cur</varname> points at the document root, which is
282	    the element &quot;story&quot;.</para>
283	</callout>
284	<callout arearefs="huntstoryinfo">
285	  <para>This loop iterates through the elements that are children of
286	  &quot;story&quot;, looking for one called &quot;storyinfo&quot;. That
287	  is the element that will contain the &quot;keywords&quot; we are
288	    looking for. It uses the <application>libxml</application> string
289	  comparison
290	    function, <function><ulink
291				       url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-parser.html#XMLSTRCMP">xmlStrcmp</ulink></function>. If there is a match, it calls the function <function>parseStory</function>.</para>
292	</callout>
293      </calloutlist>
294    </para>
295
296    <para>
297      <programlisting>
298void
299parseStory (xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNodePtr cur) {
300
301	xmlChar *key;
302	<co id="anothergetchild" /> cur = cur->xmlChildrenNode;
303	<co id="findkeyword" /> while (cur != NULL) {
304	    if ((!xmlStrcmp(cur->name, (const xmlChar *)"keyword"))) {
305	<co id="foundkeyword" />	    key = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur->xmlChildrenNode, 1);
306		    printf("keyword: %s\n", key);
307		    xmlFree(key);
308 	    }
309	cur = cur->next;
310	}
311    return;
312}
313      </programlisting>
314      <calloutlist>
315	<callout arearefs="anothergetchild">
316	  <para>Again we get the first child node.</para>
317	</callout>
318	<callout arearefs="findkeyword">
319	  <para>Like the loop above, we then iterate through the nodes, looking
320	  for one that matches the element we're interested in, in this case
321	  &quot;keyword&quot;.</para>
322	</callout>
323	<callout arearefs="foundkeyword">
324	  <para>When we find the &quot;keyword&quot; element, we need to print
325	    its contents. Remember that in <acronym>XML</acronym>, the text
326	    contained within an element is a child node of that element, so we
327	    turn to <varname>cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode</varname>. To retrieve it, we
328	    use the function <function><ulink
329					      url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLNODELISTGETSTRING">xmlNodeListGetString</ulink></function>, which also takes the <varname>doc</varname> pointer as an argument. In this case, we just print it out.</para>
330	  <note>
331	    <para>Because <function>xmlNodeListGetString</function> allocates
332	      memory for the string it returns, you must use
333	      <function>xmlFree</function> to free it.</para>
334	  </note>
335	</callout>
336      </calloutlist>
337    </para>
338
339  </sect1>
340  <sect1 id="xmltutorialxpath">
341    <title>Using XPath to Retrieve Element Content</title>
342    <para>In addition to walking the document tree to find an element,
343    <application>Libxml2</application> includes support for
344      use of <application>XPath</application> expressions to retrieve sets of
345      nodes that match a specified criteria. Full documentation of the
346      <application>XPath</application> <acronym>API</acronym> is <ulink
347	url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-xpath.html">here</ulink>.
348    </para>
349    <para><application>XPath</application> allows searching through a document
350    for nodes that match specified criteria. In the example below we search
351      through a document for the contents of all <varname>keyword</varname>
352    elements.
353      <note>
354	<para>A full discussion of <application>XPath</application> is beyond
355	  the scope of this document. For details on its use, see the <ulink
356	    url="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath">XPath specification</ulink>.</para>
357      </note>
358      Full code for this example is at <xref linkend="xpathappendix" />.
359    </para>
360    <para>Using <application>XPath</application> requires setting up an
361      xmlXPathContext and then supplying the <application>XPath</application>
362      expression and the context to the
363      <function>xmlXPathEvalExpression</function> function. The function returns
364      an xmlXPathObjectPtr, which includes the set of nodes satisfying the
365      <application>XPath</application> expression.</para>
366    <para>
367      <programlisting>
368	xmlXPathObjectPtr
369	getnodeset (xmlDocPtr doc, xmlChar *xpath){
370	
371	<co id="cocontext" />xmlXPathContextPtr context;
372	xmlXPathObjectPtr result;
373
374	<co id="cocreatecontext" />context = xmlXPathNewContext(doc);
375	<co id="corunxpath" />result = xmlXPathEvalExpression(xpath, context);
376	<co id="cocheckxpathresult" />if(xmlXPathNodeSetIsEmpty(result->nodesetval)){
377		xmlXPathFreeObject(result);
378                printf("No result\n");
379		return NULL;
380      </programlisting>
381      <calloutlist>
382	<callout arearefs="cocontext">
383	  <para>First we declare our variables.</para>
384	</callout>
385	<callout arearefs="cocreatecontext">
386	  <para>Initialize the <varname>context</varname> variable.</para>
387	</callout>
388	<callout arearefs="corunxpath">
389	  <para>Apply the <application>XPath</application> expression.</para>
390	</callout>
391	<callout arearefs="cocheckxpathresult">
392	  <para>Check the result and free the memory allocated to
393	    <varname>result</varname> if no result is found.</para>
394	</callout>
395      </calloutlist>
396    </para>
397    <para>The xmlPathObjectPtr returned by the function contains a set of nodes
398    and other information needed to iterate through the set and act on the
399      results. For this example, our functions returns the
400    <varname>xmlXPathObjectPtr</varname>. We use it to print the contents of
401      <varname>keyword</varname> nodes in our document. The node set object
402      includes the number of elements in the set (<varname>nodeNr</varname>) and
403      an array of nodes (<varname>nodeTab</varname>):
404      <programlisting>
405	<co id="conodesetcounter" />for (i=0; i &lt; nodeset->nodeNr; i++) {
406	<co id="coprintkeywords" />keyword = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, nodeset->nodeTab[i]->xmlChildrenNode, 1);
407		printf("keyword: %s\n", keyword);
408	        xmlFree(keyword);
409	}
410      </programlisting>
411      <calloutlist>
412	<callout arearefs="conodesetcounter">
413	  <para>The value of <varname>nodeset->Nr</varname> holds the number of
414	  elements in the node set. Here we use it to iterate through the array.</para>
415	</callout>
416	<callout arearefs="coprintkeywords">
417	  <para>Here we print the contents of each of the nodes returned.
418	    <note>
419	      <para>Note that we are printing the child node of the node that is
420		returned, because the contents of the <varname>keyword</varname>
421		element are a child text node.</para>
422	    </note>
423	  </para>
424	</callout>
425      </calloutlist>
426    </para>
427  </sect1>
428<sect1 id="xmltutorialwritingcontent">
429    <title>Writing element content</title>
430    <para><indexterm>
431	<primary>element</primary>
432	<secondary>writing content</secondary>
433      </indexterm>
434      Writing element content uses many of the same steps we used above
435      &mdash; parsing the document and walking the tree. We parse the document,
436      then traverse the tree to find the place we want to insert our element. For
437      this example, we want to again find the &quot;storyinfo&quot; element and
438      this time insert a keyword. Then we'll write the file to disk. Full code:
439      <xref linkend="addkeywordappendix" /></para>
440    <para>
441      The main difference in this example is in
442      <function>parseStory</function>:
443
444      <programlisting>
445void
446parseStory (xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNodePtr cur, char *keyword) {
447
448	<co id="addkeyword" /> xmlNewTextChild (cur, NULL, "keyword", keyword);
449    return;
450}
451      </programlisting>
452      <calloutlist>
453	<callout arearefs="addkeyword">
454	  <para>The <function><ulink
455				     url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLNEWTEXTCHILD">xmlNewTextChild</ulink></function>
456				     function adds a new child element at the
457				     current node pointer's location in the
458	    tree, specified by <varname>cur</varname>.</para>
459	</callout>
460      </calloutlist>
461         </para>
462
463    <para>
464      <indexterm>
465	<primary>file</primary>
466	<secondary>saving</secondary>
467      </indexterm>
468      Once the node has been added, we would like to write the document to
469      file. Is you want the element to have a namespace, you can add it here as
470      well. In our case, the namespace is NULL.
471      <programlisting>
472	xmlSaveFormatFile (docname, doc, 1);
473      </programlisting>
474      The first parameter is the name of the file to be written. You'll notice
475      it is the same as the file we just read. In this case, we just write over
476      the old file. The second parameter is a pointer to the xmlDoc
477      structure. Setting the third parameter equal to one ensures indenting on output.
478    </para>
479  </sect1>
480
481  <sect1 id="xmltutorialwritingattribute">
482    <title>Writing Attribute</title>
483    <para><indexterm>
484	<primary>attribute</primary>
485	<secondary>writing</secondary>
486      </indexterm>
487Writing an attribute is similar to writing text to a new element. In
488      this case, we'll add a reference <acronym>URI</acronym> to our
489      document. Full code:<xref linkend="addattributeappendix" />.</para>
490    <para>
491      A <sgmltag>reference</sgmltag> is a child of the <sgmltag>story</sgmltag>
492      element, so finding the place to put our new element and attribute is
493      simple. As soon as we do the error-checking test in our
494      <function>parseDoc</function>, we are in the right spot to add our
495      element. But before we do that, we need to make a declaration using a
496      data type we have not seen yet:
497      <programlisting>
498	xmlAttrPtr newattr;
499      </programlisting>
500      We also need an extra xmlNodePtr:
501      <programlisting>
502	xmlNodePtr newnode;
503      </programlisting>
504    </para>
505    <para>
506      The rest of <function>parseDoc</function> is the same as before until we
507      check to see if our root element is <sgmltag>story</sgmltag>. If it is,
508      then we know we are at the right spot to add our element:
509
510      <programlisting>
511	<co id="addreferencenode" /> newnode = xmlNewTextChild (cur, NULL, "reference", NULL);
512	<co id="addattributenode" /> newattr = xmlNewProp (newnode, "uri", uri);	
513      </programlisting>
514      <calloutlist>
515	<callout arearefs="addreferencenode">
516	  <para>First we add a new node at the location of the current node
517	    pointer, <varname>cur.</varname> using the <ulink
518							      url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLNEWTEXTCHILD">xmlNewTextChild</ulink> function.</para>
519	</callout>
520      </calloutlist>
521   </para>
522
523    <para>Once the node is added, the file is written to disk just as in the
524    previous example in which we added an element with text content.</para>
525
526  </sect1>
527
528  <sect1 id="xmltutorialattribute">
529    <title>Retrieving Attributes</title>
530    <para><indexterm>
531	<primary>attribute</primary>
532	<secondary>retrieving value</secondary>
533      </indexterm>
534Retrieving the value of an attribute is similar to the previous
535    example in which we retrieved a node's text contents. In this case we'll
536      extract the value of the <acronym>URI</acronym> we added in the previous
537      section. Full code: <xref linkend="getattributeappendix" />.</para>
538    <para>
539      The initial steps for this example are similar to the previous ones: parse
540      the doc, find the element you are interested in, then enter a function to
541      carry out the specific task required. In this case, we call
542      <function>getReference</function>:
543      <programlisting>
544void
545getReference (xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNodePtr cur) {
546
547	xmlChar *uri;
548	cur = cur->xmlChildrenNode;
549	while (cur != NULL) {
550	    if ((!xmlStrcmp(cur->name, (const xmlChar *)"reference"))) {
551		   <co id="getattributevalue" /> uri = xmlGetProp(cur, "uri");
552		    printf("uri: %s\n", uri);
553		    xmlFree(uri);
554	    }
555	    cur = cur->next;
556	}
557	return;
558}
559      </programlisting>
560    
561      <calloutlist>
562	<callout arearefs="getattributevalue">
563	  <para>
564	    The key function is <function><ulink
565					   url="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLGETPROP">xmlGetProp</ulink></function>, which returns an
566      <varname>xmlChar</varname> containing the attribute's value. In this case,
567					   we just print it out.
568      <note>
569	<para>
570	  If you are using a <acronym>DTD</acronym> that declares a fixed or
571	  default value for the attribute, this function will retrieve it.
572	</para>
573	    </note>
574	  </para>
575	</callout>
576      </calloutlist>
577     
578    </para>
579  </sect1>
580
581  <sect1 id="xmltutorialconvert">
582    <title>Encoding Conversion</title>
583
584    <para><indexterm>
585	<primary>encoding</primary>
586      </indexterm>
587Data encoding compatibility problems are one of the most common
588      difficulties encountered by programmers new to <acronym>XML</acronym> in
589      general and <application>libxml</application> in particular. Thinking
590      through the design of your application in light of this issue will help
591      avoid difficulties later. Internally, <application>libxml</application>
592      stores and manipulates data in the UTF-8 format. Data used by your program
593      in other formats, such as the commonly used ISO-8859-1 encoding, must be
594      converted to UTF-8 before passing it to <application>libxml</application>
595      functions. If you want your program's output in an encoding other than
596      UTF-8, you also must convert it.</para>
597
598      <para><application>Libxml</application> uses
599      <application>iconv</application> if it is available to convert
600    data. Without <application>iconv</application>, only UTF-8, UTF-16 and
601    ISO-8859-1 can be used as external formats. With
602    <application>iconv</application>, any format can be used provided
603    <application>iconv</application> is able to convert it to and from
604    UTF-8. Currently <application>iconv</application> supports about 150
605    different character formats with ability to convert from any to any. While
606    the actual number of supported formats varies between implementations, every
607    <application>iconv</application> implementation is almost guaranteed to
608    support every format anyone has ever heard of.</para>
609
610    <warning>
611      <para>A common mistake is to use different formats for the internal data
612	in different parts of one's code. The most common case is an application
613	that assumes ISO-8859-1 to be the internal data format, combined with
614	<application>libxml</application>, which assumes UTF-8 to be the
615	internal data format. The result is an application that treats internal
616	data differently, depending on which code section is executing. The one or
617	the other part of code will then, naturally, misinterpret the data.
618      </para>
619    </warning>
620
621    <para>This example constructs a simple document, then adds content provided
622    at the command line to the document's root element and outputs the results
623    to <filename>stdout</filename> in the proper encoding. For this example, we
624    use ISO-8859-1 encoding. The encoding of the string input at the command
625    line is converted from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8. Full code: <xref
626    linkend="convertappendix" /></para>
627
628    <para>The conversion, encapsulated in the example code in the
629      <function>convert</function> function, uses
630      <application>libxml's</application>
631    <function>xmlFindCharEncodingHandler</function> function:
632      <programlisting>
633	<co id="handlerdatatype" />xmlCharEncodingHandlerPtr handler;
634        <co id="calcsize" />size = (int)strlen(in)+1; 
635        out_size = size*2-1; 
636        out = malloc((size_t)out_size); 
637
638&hellip;
639	<co id="findhandlerfunction" />handler = xmlFindCharEncodingHandler(encoding);
640&hellip;
641	<co id="callconversionfunction" />handler->input(out, &amp;out_size, in, &amp;temp);
642&hellip;	
643	<co id="outputencoding" />xmlSaveFormatFileEnc("-", doc, encoding, 1);
644      </programlisting>
645      <calloutlist>
646	<callout arearefs="handlerdatatype">
647	  <para><varname>handler</varname> is declared as a pointer to an
648	    <function>xmlCharEncodingHandler</function> function.</para>
649	</callout>
650	<callout arearefs="calcsize">
651	  <para>The <function>xmlCharEncodingHandler</function> function needs
652	  to be given the size of the input and output strings, which are
653	    calculated here for strings <varname>in</varname> and
654	  <varname>out</varname>.</para>
655	</callout>
656	<callout arearefs="findhandlerfunction">
657	  <para><function>xmlFindCharEncodingHandler</function> takes as its
658	    argument the data's initial encoding and searches
659	    <application>libxml's</application> built-in set of conversion
660	    handlers, returning a pointer to the function or NULL if none is
661	    found.</para>
662	</callout>
663	<callout arearefs="callconversionfunction">
664	  <para>The conversion function identified by <varname>handler</varname>
665	  requires as its arguments pointers to the input and output strings,
666	  along with the length of each. The lengths must be determined
667	  separately by the application.</para>
668	</callout>
669	<callout arearefs="outputencoding">
670	  <para>To output in a specified encoding rather than UTF-8, we use
671	    <function>xmlSaveFormatFileEnc</function>, specifying the
672	    encoding.</para>
673	</callout>
674      </calloutlist>
675    </para>
676  </sect1>
677
678  <appendix id="compilation">
679    <title>Compilation</title>
680    <para><indexterm>
681	<primary>compiler flags</primary>
682      </indexterm>
683      <application>Libxml</application> includes a script,
684    <application>xml2-config</application>, that can be used to generate
685    flags for compilation and linking of programs written with the
686      library. For pre-processor and compiler flags, use <command>xml2-config
687	--cflags</command>. For library linking flags, use <command>xml2-config
688	--libs</command>. Other options are available using <command>xml2-config
689    --help</command>.</para>   
690  </appendix>
691
692  <appendix id="sampledoc">
693    <title>Sample Document</title>
694    <programlisting>&STORY;</programlisting>
695  </appendix>
696  <appendix id="keywordappendix">
697    <title>Code for Keyword Example</title>
698    <para>
699      <programlisting>&KEYWORD;</programlisting>
700    </para>
701  </appendix>
702  <appendix id="xpathappendix">
703    <title>Code for XPath Example</title>
704    <para>
705      <programlisting>&XPATH;</programlisting>
706    </para>
707  </appendix>
708<appendix id="addkeywordappendix">
709    <title>Code for Add Keyword Example</title>
710    <para>
711      <programlisting>&ADDKEYWORD;</programlisting>
712    </para>
713  </appendix>
714<appendix id="addattributeappendix">
715    <title>Code for Add Attribute Example</title>
716    <para>
717      <programlisting>&ADDATTRIBUTE;</programlisting>
718    </para>
719  </appendix>
720<appendix id="getattributeappendix">
721    <title>Code for Retrieving Attribute Value Example</title>
722    <para>
723      <programlisting>&GETATTRIBUTE;</programlisting>
724    </para>
725  </appendix>
726  <appendix id="convertappendix">
727    <title>Code for Encoding Conversion Example</title>
728    <para>
729      <programlisting>&CONVERT;</programlisting>
730    </para>
731  </appendix>
732  <appendix>
733    <title>Acknowledgements</title>
734    <para>A number of people have generously offered feedback, code and
735    suggested improvements to this tutorial. In no particular order:
736      <simplelist type="inline">
737	<member>Daniel Veillard</member>
738	<member>Marcus Labib Iskander</member>
739	<member>Christopher R. Harris</member>
740	<member>Igor Zlatkovic</member>
741	<member>Niraj Tolia</member>
742	<member>David Turover</member>
743      </simplelist>
744    </para>
745  </appendix>
746  <index />
747</article>
748