xml.html revision 365e13be6c7faa99d2797b973e39b3491ab7c18a
1<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" 2 "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> 3<html> 4<head> 5 <title>The XML library for Gnome</title> 6 <meta name="GENERATOR" content="amaya V2.1"> 7 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html"> 8</head> 9 10<body bgcolor="#ffffff"> 11<p><a href="http://www.gnome.org/"><img src="smallfootonly.gif" alt="Gnome 12Logo"></a><a href="http://www.w3.org/Status"><img src="w3c.png" alt="W3C 13Logo"></a></p> 14 15<h1 align="center">The XML library for Gnome</h1> 16 17<h2 style="text-align: center">libxml, a.k.a. gnome-xml</h2> 18 19<p></p> 20<ul> 21 <li><a href="#Introducti">Introduction</a></li> 22 <li><a href="#Documentat">Documentation</a></li> 23 <li><a href="#Downloads">Downloads</a></li> 24 <li><a href="#News">News</a></li> 25 <li><a href="#XML">XML</a></li> 26 <li><a href="#tree">The tree output</a></li> 27 <li><a href="#interface">The SAX interface</a></li> 28 <li><a href="#library">The XML library interfaces</a> 29 <ul> 30 <li><a href="#Invoking">Invoking the parser: the pull way</a></li> 31 <li><a href="#Invoking">Invoking the parser: the push way</a></li> 32 <li><a href="#Invoking2">Invoking the parser: the SAX interface</a></li> 33 <li><a href="#Building">Building a tree from scratch</a></li> 34 <li><a href="#Traversing">Traversing the tree</a></li> 35 <li><a href="#Modifying">Modifying the tree</a></li> 36 <li><a href="#Saving">Saving the tree</a></li> 37 <li><a href="#Compressio">Compression</a></li> 38 </ul> 39 </li> 40 <li><a href="#Entities">Entities or no entities</a></li> 41 <li><a href="#Namespaces">Namespaces</a></li> 42 <li><a href="#Validation">Validation</a></li> 43 <li><a href="#Principles">DOM principles</a></li> 44 <li><a href="#real">A real example</a></li> 45 <li><a href="#Contributi">Contribution</a></li> 46</ul> 47 48<h2><a name="Introducti">Introduction</a></h2> 49 50<p>This document describes libxml, the <a 51href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML</a> library provided in the <a 52href="http://www.gnome.org/">Gnome</a> framework. XML is a standard for 53building tag-based structured documents/data.</p> 54 55<p>Here are some key points about libxml:</p> 56<ul> 57 <li>The internal document repesentation is as close as possible to the <a 58 href="http://www.w3.org/DOM/">DOM</a> interfaces.</li> 59 <li>Libxml also has a <a href="http://www.megginson.com/SAX/index.html">SAX 60 like interface</a>; the interface is designed to be compatible with <a 61 href="http://www.jclark.com/xml/expat.html">Expat</a>.</li> 62 <li>Libxml now includes a nearly complete <a 63 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath">XPath</a> implementation.</li> 64 <li>Libxml exports Push and Pull type parser interfaces for both XML and 65 HTML.</li> 66 <li>This library is released both under the <a 67 href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software-19980720.html">W3C 68 IPR</a> and the GNU LGPL. Use either at your convenience, basically this 69 should make everybody happy, if not, drop me a mail.</li> 70 <li>There is <a href="upgrade.html">a first set of instructions</a> 71 concerning upgrade from libxml-1.x to libxml-2.x</li> 72</ul> 73 74<h2><a name="Documentat">Documentation</a></h2> 75 76<p>There are some on-line resources about using libxml:</p> 77<ol> 78 <li>Check the <a href="FAQ.html">FAQ</a></li> 79 <li>Check the <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/libxml.html">extensive 80 documentation</a> automatically extracted from code comments.</li> 81 <li>This page provides a global overview and <a href="#real">some 82 examples</a> on how to use libxml.</li> 83 <li><a href="mailto:james@daa.com.au">James Henstridge</a> wrote <a 84 href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">some nice 85 documentation</a> explaining how to use the libxml SAX interface.</li> 86 <li>George Lebl wrote <a 87 href="http://www-4.ibm.com/software/developer/library/gnome3/">an article 88 for IBM developerWorks</a> about using libxml.</li> 89 <li>It is also a good idea to check to <a href="mailto:raph@levien.com">Raph 90 Levien</a> <a href="http://levien.com/gnome/">web site</a> since he is 91 building the <a href="http://levien.com/gnome/gdome.html">DOM interface 92 gdome</a> on top of libxml result tree and an implementation of <a 93 href="http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/">SVG</a> called <a 94 href="http://www.levien.com/svg/">gill</a>. Check his <a 95 href="http://www.levien.com/gnome/domination.html">DOMination 96 paper</a>.</li> 97 <li>Check <a href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gnome-xml/TODO">the TODO 98 file</a></li> 99 <li>Read the <a href="upgrade.html">1.x to 2.x upgrade path</a>. If you are 100 starting a new project using libxml you should really use the 2.x 101 version.</li> 102 <li>And don't forget to look at the <a href="/messages/">mailing-list 103 archive</a>.</li> 104</ol> 105 106<h3>Reporting bugs and getting help</h3> 107 108<p>Well, bugs or missing features are always possible, and I will make a point 109of fixing them in a timely fashion. The best way to report a bug is to <a 110href="http://bugs.gnome.org/db/pa/lgnome-xml.html">use the Gnome bug tracking 111database</a>. I look at reports there regularly and it's good to have a 112reminder when a bug is still open. Check the <a 113href="http://bugs.gnome.org/Reporting.html">instructions on reporting bugs</a> 114and be sure to specify that the bug is for the package gnome-xml.</p> 115 116<p>There is also a mailing-list <a 117href="mailto:xml@rufus.w3.org">xml@rufus.w3.org</a> for libxml, with an <a 118href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages">on-line archive</a>. To subscribe to this 119majordomo based list, send a mail message to <a 120href="mailto:majordomo@rufus.w3.org">majordomo@rufus.w3.org</a> with 121"subscribe xml" in the <strong>content</strong> of the message.</p> 122 123<p>Alternatively, you can just send the bug to the <a 124href="mailto:xml@rufus.w3.org">xml@rufus.w3.org</a> list.</p> 125 126<p>Of course, bugs reports with a suggested patch for fixing them will 127probably be processed faster.</p> 128 129<p>If you're looking for help, a quick look at <a 130href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages/#407">the list archive</a> may actually 131provide the answer, I usually send source samples when answering libxml usage 132questions. The <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/book1.html">auto-generated 133documentantion</a> is not as polished as I would like (i need to learn more 134about Docbook), but it's a good starting point.</p> 135 136<h2><a name="Downloads">Downloads</a></h2> 137 138<p>The latest versions of libxml can be found on <a 139href="ftp://rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/">rpmfind.net</a> or on the <a 140href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/MIRRORS.html">Gnome FTP server</a> either 141as a <a href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/libxml/">source 142archive</a> or <a href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/contrib/rpms/">RPM 143packages</a>. (NOTE that you need both the <a 144href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml.html">libxml</a> and <a 145href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml-devel.html">libxml-devel</a> 146packages installed to compile applications using libxml.)</p> 147 148<p><a name="Snapshot">Snapshot:</a></p> 149<ul> 150 <li>Code from the W3C cvs base libxml <a 151 href="ftp://rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/cvs-snapshot.tar.gz">cvs-snapshot.tar.gz</a></li> 152 <li>Docs, content of the web site, the list archive included <a 153 href="ftp://rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/libxml-docs.tar.gz">libxml-docs.tar.gz</a></li> 154</ul> 155 156<p><a name="Contribs">Contribs:</a></p> 157 158<p>I do accept external contributions, especially if compiling on another 159platform, get in touch with me to upload the package. I will keep them in the 160<a href="ftp://rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/contribs/">contrib directory</a></p> 161 162<p>Libxml is also available from 2 CVS bases:</p> 163<ul> 164 <li><p>The <a href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/XML/">W3C CVS base</a>, 165 available read-only using the CVS pserver authentification (I tend to use 166 this base for my own development, so it's updated more regularly, but the 167 content may not be as stable):</p> 168 <pre>CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@dev.w3.org:/sources/public 169 password: anonymous 170 module: XML</pre> 171 </li> 172 <li><p>The <a 173 href="http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&dir=gnome-xml">Gnome 174 CVS base</a>. Check the <a 175 href="http://developer.gnome.org/tools/cvs.html">Gnome CVS Tools</a> page; 176 the CVS module is <b>gnome-xml</b>.</p> 177 </li> 178</ul> 179 180<h2><a name="News">News</a></h2> 181 182<h3>CVS only : check the <a 183href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gnome-xml/ChangeLog">Changelog</a> file 184for really accurate description</h3> 185<ul> 186 <li>working on HTML and XML links recognition layers, get in touch with me 187 if you want to test those.</li> 188</ul> 189 190<h3>2.1.0 and 1.8.8: June 29 2000</h3> 191<ul> 192 <li>1.8.8 is mostly a comodity package for upgrading to libxml2 accoding to 193 <a href="upgrade.html">new instructions</a>. It fixes a nasty problem 194 about &#38; charref parsing</li> 195 <li>2.1.0 also ease the upgrade from libxml v1 to the recent version. it 196 also contains numerous fixes and enhancements: 197 <ul> 198 <li>added xmlStopParser() to stop parsing</li> 199 <li>improved a lot parsing speed when there is large CDATA blocs</li> 200 <li>includes XPath patches provided by Picdar Technology</li> 201 <li>tried to fix as much as possible DtD validation and namespace 202 related problems</li> 203 <li>output to a given encoding has been added/tested</li> 204 <li>lot of various fixes</li> 205 </ul> 206 </li> 207</ul> 208 209<h3>2.0.0: Apr 12 2000</h3> 210<ul> 211 <li>First public release of libxml2. If you are using libxml, it's a good 212 idea to check the 1.x to 2.x upgrade instructions. NOTE: while initally 213 scheduled for Apr 3 the relase occured only on Apr 12 due to massive 214 workload.</li> 215 <li>The include are now located under $prefix/include/libxml (instead of 216 $prefix/include/gnome-xml), they also are referenced by 217 <pre>#include <libxml/xxx.h></pre> 218 <p>instead of</p> 219 <pre>#include "xxx.h"</pre> 220 </li> 221 <li>a new URI module for parsing URIs and following strictly RFC 2396</li> 222 <li>the memory allocation routines used by libxml can now be overloaded 223 dynamically by using xmlMemSetup()</li> 224 <li>The previously CVS only tool tester has been renamed 225 <strong>xmllint</strong> and is now installed as part of the libxml2 226 package</li> 227 <li>The I/O interface has been revamped. There is now ways to plug in 228 specific I/O modules, either at the URI scheme detection level using 229 xmlRegisterInputCallbacks() or by passing I/O functions when creating a 230 parser context using xmlCreateIOParserCtxt()</li> 231 <li>there is a C preprocessor macro LIBXML_VERSION providing the version 232 number of the libxml module in use</li> 233 <li>a number of optional features of libxml can now be excluded at configure 234 time (FTP/HTTP/HTML/XPath/Debug)</li> 235</ul> 236 237<h3>2.0.0beta: Mar 14 2000</h3> 238<ul> 239 <li>This is a first Beta release of libxml version 2</li> 240 <li>It's available only from<a href="ftp://rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/"> 241 rpmfind.net FTP</a>, it's packaged as libxml2-2.0.0beta and available as 242 tar and RPMs</li> 243 <li>This version is now the head in the Gnome CVS base, the old one is 244 available under the tag LIB_XML_1_X</li> 245 <li>This includes a very large set of changes. Froma programmatic point of 246 view applications should not have to be modified too much, check the <a 247 href="upgrade.html">upgrade page</a></li> 248 <li>Some interfaces may changes (especially a bit about encoding).</li> 249 <li>the updates includes: 250 <ul> 251 <li>fix I18N support. ISO-Latin-x/UTF-8/UTF-16 (nearly) seems correctly 252 handled now</li> 253 <li>Better handling of entities, especially well formedness checking and 254 proper PEref extensions in external subsets</li> 255 <li>DTD conditional sections</li> 256 <li>Validation now correcly handle entities content</li> 257 <li><a href="http://rpmfind.net/tools/gdome/messages/0039.html">change 258 structures to accomodate DOM</a></li> 259 </ul> 260 </li> 261 <li>Serious progress were made toward compliance, <a 262 href="conf/result.html">here are the result of the test</a> against the 263 OASIS testsuite (except the japanese tests since I don't support that 264 encoding yet). This URL is rebuilt every couple of hours using the CVS 265 head version.</li> 266</ul> 267 268<h3>1.8.7: Mar 6 2000</h3> 269<ul> 270 <li>This is a bug fix release:</li> 271 <li>It is possible to disable the ignorable blanks heuristic used by 272 libxml-1.x, a new function xmlKeepBlanksDefault(0) will allow this. Note 273 that for adherence to XML spec, this behaviour will be disabled by default 274 in 2.x . The same function will allow to keep compatibility for old 275 code.</li> 276 <li>Blanks in <a> </a> constructs are not ignored anymore, avoiding 277 heuristic is really the Right Way :-\</li> 278 <li>The unchecked use of snprintf which was breaking libxml-1.8.6 279 compilation on some platforms has been fixed</li> 280 <li>nanoftp.c nanohttp.c: Fixed '#' and '?' stripping when processing 281 URIs</li> 282</ul> 283 284<h3>1.8.6: Jan 31 2000</h3> 285<ul> 286 <li>added a nanoFTP transport module, debugged until the new version of <a 287 href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/rpmfind.html">rpmfind</a> can use 288 it without troubles</li> 289</ul> 290 291<h3>1.8.5: Jan 21 2000</h3> 292<ul> 293 <li>adding APIs to parse a well balanced chunk of XML (production <a 294 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#NT-content">[43] content</a> of the XML 295 spec)</li> 296 <li>fixed a hideous bug in xmlGetProp pointed by Rune.Djurhuus@fast.no</li> 297 <li>Jody Goldberg <jgoldberg@home.com> provided another patch trying to 298 solve the zlib checks problems</li> 299 <li>The current state in gnome CVS base is expected to ship as 1.8.5 with 300 gnumeric soon</li> 301</ul> 302 303<h3>1.8.4: Jan 13 2000</h3> 304<ul> 305 <li>bug fixes, reintroduced xmlNewGlobalNs(), fixed xmlNewNs()</li> 306 <li>all exit() call should have been removed from libxml</li> 307 <li>fixed a problem with INCLUDE_WINSOCK on WIN32 platform</li> 308 <li>added newDocFragment()</li> 309</ul> 310 311<h3>1.8.3: Jan 5 2000</h3> 312<ul> 313 <li>a Push interface for the XML and HTML parsers</li> 314 <li>a shell-like interface to the document tree (try tester --shell :-)</li> 315 <li>lots of bug fixes and improvement added over XMas hollidays</li> 316 <li>fixed the DTD parsing code to work with the xhtml DTD</li> 317 <li>added xmlRemoveProp(), xmlRemoveID() and xmlRemoveRef()</li> 318 <li>Fixed bugs in xmlNewNs()</li> 319 <li>External entity loading code has been revamped, now it uses 320 xmlLoadExternalEntity(), some fix on entities processing were added</li> 321 <li>cleaned up WIN32 includes of socket stuff</li> 322</ul> 323 324<h3>1.8.2: Dec 21 1999</h3> 325<ul> 326 <li>I got another problem with includes and C++, I hope this issue is fixed 327 for good this time</li> 328 <li>Added a few tree modification functions: xmlReplaceNode, 329 xmlAddPrevSibling, xmlAddNextSibling, xmlNodeSetName and 330 xmlDocSetRootElement</li> 331 <li>Tried to improve the HTML output with help from <a 332 href="mailto:clahey@umich.edu">Chris Lahey</a></li> 333</ul> 334 335<h3>1.8.1: Dec 18 1999</h3> 336<ul> 337 <li>various patches to avoid troubles when using libxml with C++ compilers 338 the "namespace" keyword and C escaping in include files</li> 339 <li>a problem in one of the core macros IS_CHAR was corrected</li> 340 <li>fixed a bug introduced in 1.8.0 breaking default namespace processing, 341 and more specifically the Dia application</li> 342 <li>fixed a posteriori validation (validation after parsing, or by using a 343 Dtd not specified in the original document)</li> 344 <li>fixed a bug in</li> 345</ul> 346 347<h3>1.8.0: Dec 12 1999</h3> 348<ul> 349 <li>cleanup, especially memory wise</li> 350 <li>the parser should be more reliable, especially the HTML one, it should 351 not crash, whatever the input !</li> 352 <li>Integrated various patches, especially a speedup improvement for large 353 dataset from <a href="mailto:cnygard@bellatlantic.net">Carl Nygard</a>, 354 configure with --with-buffers to enable them.</li> 355 <li>attribute normalization, oops should have been added long ago !</li> 356 <li>attributes defaulted from Dtds should be available, xmlSetProp() now 357 does entities escapting by default.</li> 358</ul> 359 360<h3>1.7.4: Oct 25 1999</h3> 361<ul> 362 <li>Lots of HTML improvement</li> 363 <li>Fixed some errors when saving both XML and HTML</li> 364 <li>More examples, the regression tests should now look clean</li> 365 <li>Fixed a bug with contiguous charref</li> 366</ul> 367 368<h3>1.7.3: Sep 29 1999</h3> 369<ul> 370 <li>portability problems fixed</li> 371 <li>snprintf was used unconditionnally, leading to link problems on system 372 were it's not available, fixed</li> 373</ul> 374 375<h3>1.7.1: Sep 24 1999</h3> 376<ul> 377 <li>The basic type for strings manipulated by libxml has been renamed in 378 1.7.1 from <strong>CHAR</strong> to <strong>xmlChar</strong>. The reason 379 is that CHAR was conflicting with a predefined type on Windows. However on 380 non WIN32 environment, compatibility is provided by the way of a 381 <strong>#define </strong>.</li> 382 <li>Changed another error : the use of a structure field called errno, and 383 leading to troubles on platforms where it's a macro</li> 384</ul> 385 386<h3>1.7.0: sep 23 1999</h3> 387<ul> 388 <li>Added the ability to fetch remote DTD or parsed entities, see the <a 389 href="gnome-xml-nanohttp.html">nanohttp</a> module.</li> 390 <li>Added an errno to report errors by another mean than a simple printf 391 like callback</li> 392 <li>Finished ID/IDREF support and checking when validation</li> 393 <li>Serious memory leaks fixed (there is now a <a 394 href="gnome-xml-xmlmemory.html">memory wrapper</a> module)</li> 395 <li>Improvement of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath">XPath</a> 396 implementation</li> 397 <li>Added an HTML parser front-end</li> 398</ul> 399 400<h2><a name="XML">XML</a></h2> 401 402<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml">XML is a standard</a> for 403markup-based structured documents. Here is <a name="example">an example XML 404document</a>:</p> 405<pre><?xml version="1.0"?> 406<EXAMPLE prop1="gnome is great" prop2="&amp; linux too"> 407 <head> 408 <title>Welcome to Gnome</title> 409 </head> 410 <chapter> 411 <title>The Linux adventure</title> 412 <p>bla bla bla ...</p> 413 <image href="linus.gif"/> 414 <p>...</p> 415 </chapter> 416</EXAMPLE></pre> 417 418<p>The first line specifies that it's an XML document and gives useful 419information about its encoding. Then the document is a text format whose 420structure is specified by tags between brackets. <strong>Each tag opened has 421to be closed</strong>. XML is pedantic about this. However, if a tag is empty 422(no content), a single tag can serve as both the opening and closing tag if it 423ends with <code>/></code> rather than with <code>></code>. Note that, for 424example, the image tag has no content (just an attribute) and is closed by 425ending the tag with <code>/></code>.</p> 426 427<p>XML can be applied sucessfully to a wide range of uses, from long term 428structured document maintenance (where it follows the steps of SGML) to simple 429data encoding mechanisms like configuration file formatting (glade), 430spreadsheets (gnumeric), or even shorter lived documents such as WebDAV where 431it is used to encode remote calls between a client and a server.</p> 432 433<h2><a name="tree">The tree output</a></h2> 434 435<p>The parser returns a tree built during the document analysis. The value 436returned is an <strong>xmlDocPtr</strong> (i.e., a pointer to an 437<strong>xmlDoc</strong> structure). This structure contains information such 438as the file name, the document type, and a <strong>root</strong> pointer which 439is the root of the document (or more exactly the first child under the root 440which is the document). The tree is made of <strong>xmlNode</strong>s, chained 441in double-linked lists of siblings and with childs<->parent relationship. 442An xmlNode can also carry properties (a chain of xmlAttr structures). An 443attribute may have a value which is a list of TEXT or ENTITY_REF nodes.</p> 444 445<p>Here is an example (erroneous with respect to the XML spec since there 446should be only one ELEMENT under the root):</p> 447 448<p><img src="structure.gif" alt=" structure.gif "></p> 449 450<p>In the source package there is a small program (not installed by default) 451called <strong>xmllint</strong> which parses XML files given as argument and 452prints them back as parsed. This is useful for detecting errors both in XML 453code and in the XML parser itself. It has an option <strong>--debug</strong> 454which prints the actual in-memory structure of the document, here is the 455result with the <a href="#example">example</a> given before:</p> 456<pre>DOCUMENT 457version=1.0 458standalone=true 459 ELEMENT EXAMPLE 460 ATTRIBUTE prop1 461 TEXT 462 content=gnome is great 463 ATTRIBUTE prop2 464 ENTITY_REF 465 TEXT 466 content= linux too 467 ELEMENT head 468 ELEMENT title 469 TEXT 470 content=Welcome to Gnome 471 ELEMENT chapter 472 ELEMENT title 473 TEXT 474 content=The Linux adventure 475 ELEMENT p 476 TEXT 477 content=bla bla bla ... 478 ELEMENT image 479 ATTRIBUTE href 480 TEXT 481 content=linus.gif 482 ELEMENT p 483 TEXT 484 content=...</pre> 485 486<p>This should be useful for learning the internal representation model.</p> 487 488<h2><a name="interface">The SAX interface</a></h2> 489 490<p>Sometimes the DOM tree output is just too large to fit reasonably into 491memory. In that case (and if you don't expect to save back the XML document 492loaded using libxml), it's better to use the SAX interface of libxml. SAX is a 493<strong>callback-based interface</strong> to the parser. Before parsing, the 494application layer registers a customized set of callbacks which are called by 495the library as it progresses through the XML input.</p> 496 497<p>To get more detailed step-by-step guidance on using the SAX interface of 498libxml, see the 499href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">nice 500documentation.written by <a href="mailto:james@daa.com.au">James 501Henstridge</a>.</p> 502 503<p>You can debug the SAX behaviour by using the <strong>testSAX</strong> 504program located in the gnome-xml module (it's usually not shipped in the 505binary packages of libxml, but you can find it in the tar source 506distribution). Here is the sequence of callbacks that would be reported by 507testSAX when parsing the example XML document shown earlier:</p> 508<pre>SAX.setDocumentLocator() 509SAX.startDocument() 510SAX.getEntity(amp) 511SAX.startElement(EXAMPLE, prop1='gnome is great', prop2='&amp; linux too') 512SAX.characters( , 3) 513SAX.startElement(head) 514SAX.characters( , 4) 515SAX.startElement(title) 516SAX.characters(Welcome to Gnome, 16) 517SAX.endElement(title) 518SAX.characters( , 3) 519SAX.endElement(head) 520SAX.characters( , 3) 521SAX.startElement(chapter) 522SAX.characters( , 4) 523SAX.startElement(title) 524SAX.characters(The Linux adventure, 19) 525SAX.endElement(title) 526SAX.characters( , 4) 527SAX.startElement(p) 528SAX.characters(bla bla bla ..., 15) 529SAX.endElement(p) 530SAX.characters( , 4) 531SAX.startElement(image, href='linus.gif') 532SAX.endElement(image) 533SAX.characters( , 4) 534SAX.startElement(p) 535SAX.characters(..., 3) 536SAX.endElement(p) 537SAX.characters( , 3) 538SAX.endElement(chapter) 539SAX.characters( , 1) 540SAX.endElement(EXAMPLE) 541SAX.endDocument()</pre> 542 543<p>Most of the other functionalities of libxml are based on the DOM 544tree-building facility, so nearly everything up to the end of this document 545presupposes the use of the standard DOM tree build. Note that the DOM tree 546itself is built by a set of registered default callbacks, without internal 547specific interface.</p> 548 549<h2><a name="library">The XML library interfaces</a></h2> 550 551<p>This section is directly intended to help programmers getting bootstrapped 552using the XML library from the C language. It is not intended to be extensive. 553I hope the automatically generated documents will provide the completeness 554required, but as a separate set of documents. The interfaces of the XML 555library are by principle low level, there is nearly zero abstraction. Those 556interested in a higher level API should <a href="#DOM">look at DOM</a>.</p> 557 558<p>The <a href="gnome-xml-parser.html">parser interfaces for XML</a> are 559separated from the <a href="gnome-xml-htmlparser.html">HTML parser 560interfaces</a>. Let's have a look at how the XML parser can be called:</p> 561 562<h3><a name="Invoking">Invoking the parser : the pull method</a></h3> 563 564<p>Usually, the first thing to do is to read an XML input. The parser accepts 565documents either from in-memory strings or from files. The functions are 566defined in "parser.h":</p> 567<dl> 568 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseMemory(char *buffer, int size);</code></dt> 569 <dd><p>Parse a null-terminated string containing the document.</p> 570 </dd> 571</dl> 572<dl> 573 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseFile(const char *filename);</code></dt> 574 <dd><p>Parse an XML document contained in a (possibly compressed) 575 file.</p> 576 </dd> 577</dl> 578 579<p>The parser returns a pointer to the document structure (or NULL in case of 580failure).</p> 581 582<h3 id="Invoking1">Invoking the parser: the push method</h3> 583 584<p>In order for the application to keep the control when the document is been 585fetched (which is common for GUI based programs) libxml provides a push 586interface, too, as of version 1.8.3. Here are the interface functions:</p> 587<pre>xmlParserCtxtPtr xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(xmlSAXHandlerPtr sax, 588 void *user_data, 589 const char *chunk, 590 int size, 591 const char *filename); 592int xmlParseChunk (xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt, 593 const char *chunk, 594 int size, 595 int terminate);</pre> 596 597<p>and here is a simple example showing how to use the interface:</p> 598<pre> FILE *f; 599 600 f = fopen(filename, "r"); 601 if (f != NULL) { 602 int res, size = 1024; 603 char chars[1024]; 604 xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt; 605 606 res = fread(chars, 1, 4, f); 607 if (res > 0) { 608 ctxt = xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(NULL, NULL, 609 chars, res, filename); 610 while ((res = fread(chars, 1, size, f)) > 0) { 611 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, res, 0); 612 } 613 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, 0, 1); 614 doc = ctxt->myDoc; 615 xmlFreeParserCtxt(ctxt); 616 } 617 }</pre> 618 619<p>Also note that the HTML parser embedded into libxml also has a push 620interface; the functions are just prefixed by "html" rather than "xml"</p> 621 622<h3 id="Invoking2">Invoking the parser: the SAX interface</h3> 623 624<p>A couple of comments can be made, first this mean that the parser is 625memory-hungry, first to load the document in memory, second to build the tree. 626Reading a document without building the tree is possible using the SAX 627interfaces (see SAX.h and <a 628href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">James 629Henstridge's documentation</a>). Note also that the push interface can be 630limited to SAX. Just use the two first arguments of 631<code>xmlCreatePushParserCtxt()</code>.</p> 632 633<h3><a name="Building">Building a tree from scratch</a></h3> 634 635<p>The other way to get an XML tree in memory is by building it. Basically 636there is a set of functions dedicated to building new elements. (These are 637also described in <libxml/tree.h>.) For example, here is a piece of code 638that produces the XML document used in the previous examples:</p> 639<pre> #include <libxml/tree.h> 640 xmlDocPtr doc; 641 xmlNodePtr tree, subtree; 642 643 doc = xmlNewDoc("1.0"); 644 doc->root = xmlNewDocNode(doc, NULL, "EXAMPLE", NULL); 645 xmlSetProp(doc->root, "prop1", "gnome is great"); 646 xmlSetProp(doc->root, "prop2", "& linux too"); 647 tree = xmlNewChild(doc->root, NULL, "head", NULL); 648 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "Welcome to Gnome"); 649 tree = xmlNewChild(doc->root, NULL, "chapter", NULL); 650 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "The Linux adventure"); 651 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "p", "bla bla bla ..."); 652 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "image", NULL); 653 xmlSetProp(subtree, "href", "linus.gif");</pre> 654 655<p>Not really rocket science ...</p> 656 657<h3><a name="Traversing">Traversing the tree</a></h3> 658 659<p>Basically by <a href="gnome-xml-tree.html">including "tree.h"</a> your code 660has access to the internal structure of all the elements of the tree. The 661names should be somewhat simple like <strong>parent</strong>, 662<strong>childs</strong>, <strong>next</strong>, <strong>prev</strong>, 663<strong>properties</strong>, etc... For example, still with the previous 664example:</p> 665<pre><code>doc->root->childs->childs</code></pre> 666 667<p>points to the title element,</p> 668<pre>doc->root->childs->next->child->child</pre> 669 670<p>points to the text node containing the chapter title "The Linux 671adventure".</p> 672 673<p><strong>NOTE</strong>: XML allows <em>PI</em>s and <em>comments</em> to be 674present before the document root, so <code>doc->root</code> may point to an 675element which is not the document Root Element, a function 676<code>xmlDocGetRootElement()</code> was added for this purpose.</p> 677 678<h3><a name="Modifying">Modifying the tree</a></h3> 679 680<p>Functions are provided for reading and writing the document content. Here 681is an excerpt from the <a href="gnome-xml-tree.html">tree API</a>:</p> 682<dl> 683 <dt><code>xmlAttrPtr xmlSetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar *name, const 684 xmlChar *value);</code></dt> 685 <dd><p>This sets (or changes) an attribute carried by an ELEMENT node. The 686 value can be NULL.</p> 687 </dd> 688</dl> 689<dl> 690 <dt><code>const xmlChar *xmlGetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar 691 *name);</code></dt> 692 <dd><p>This function returns a pointer to the property content. Note that 693 no extra copy is made.</p> 694 </dd> 695</dl> 696 697<p>Two functions are provided for reading and writing the text associated with 698elements:</p> 699<dl> 700 <dt><code>xmlNodePtr xmlStringGetNodeList(xmlDocPtr doc, const xmlChar 701 *value);</code></dt> 702 <dd><p>This function takes an "external" string and convert it to one text 703 node or possibly to a list of entity and text nodes. All non-predefined 704 entity references like &Gnome; will be stored internally as entity 705 nodes, hence the result of the function may not be a single node.</p> 706 </dd> 707</dl> 708<dl> 709 <dt><code>xmlChar *xmlNodeListGetString(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNodePtr list, int 710 inLine);</code></dt> 711 <dd><p>This function is the inverse of 712 <code>xmlStringGetNodeList()</code>. It generates a new string 713 containing the content of the text and entity nodes. Note the extra 714 argument inLine. If this argument is set to 1, the function will expand 715 entity references. For example, instead of returning the &Gnome; 716 XML encoding in the string, it will substitute it with its value (say, 717 "GNU Network Object Model Environment"). Set this argument if you want 718 to use the string for non-XML usage like User Interface.</p> 719 </dd> 720</dl> 721 722<h3><a name="Saving">Saving a tree</a></h3> 723 724<p>Basically 3 options are possible:</p> 725<dl> 726 <dt><code>void xmlDocDumpMemory(xmlDocPtr cur, xmlChar**mem, int 727 *size);</code></dt> 728 <dd><p>Returns a buffer into which the document has been saved.</p> 729 </dd> 730</dl> 731<dl> 732 <dt><code>extern void xmlDocDump(FILE *f, xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt> 733 <dd><p>Dumps a document to an open file descriptor.</p> 734 </dd> 735</dl> 736<dl> 737 <dt><code>int xmlSaveFile(const char *filename, xmlDocPtr cur);</code></dt> 738 <dd><p>Saves the document to a file. In this case, the compression 739 interface is triggered if it has been turned on.</p> 740 </dd> 741</dl> 742 743<h3><a name="Compressio">Compression</a></h3> 744 745<p>The library transparently handles compression when doing file-based 746accesses. The level of compression on saves can be turned on either globally 747or individually for one file:</p> 748<dl> 749 <dt><code>int xmlGetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt> 750 <dd><p>Gets the document compression ratio (0-9).</p> 751 </dd> 752</dl> 753<dl> 754 <dt><code>void xmlSetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc, int mode);</code></dt> 755 <dd><p>Sets the document compression ratio.</p> 756 </dd> 757</dl> 758<dl> 759 <dt><code>int xmlGetCompressMode(void);</code></dt> 760 <dd><p>Gets the default compression ratio.</p> 761 </dd> 762</dl> 763<dl> 764 <dt><code>void xmlSetCompressMode(int mode);</code></dt> 765 <dd><p>Sets the default compression ratio.</p> 766 </dd> 767</dl> 768 769<h2><a name="Entities">Entities or no entities</a></h2> 770 771<p>Entities in principle are similar to simple C macros. An entity defines an 772abbreviation for a given string that you can reuse many times throughout the 773content of your document. Entities are especially useful when a given string 774may occur frequently within a document, or to confine the change needed to a 775document to a restricted area in the internal subset of the document (at the 776beginning). Example:</p> 777<pre>1 <?xml version="1.0"?> 7782 <!DOCTYPE EXAMPLE SYSTEM "example.dtd" [ 7793 <!ENTITY xml "Extensible Markup Language"> 7804 ]> 7815 <EXAMPLE> 7826 &xml; 7837 </EXAMPLE></pre> 784 785<p>Line 3 declares the xml entity. Line 6 uses the xml entity, by prefixing 786it's name with '&' and following it by ';' without any spaces added. There 787are 5 predefined entities in libxml allowing you to escape charaters with 788predefined meaning in some parts of the xml document content: 789<strong>&lt;</strong> for the character '<', <strong>&gt;</strong> 790for the character '>', <strong>&apos;</strong> for the character ''', 791<strong>&quot;</strong> for the character '"', and 792<strong>&amp;</strong> for the character '&'.</p> 793 794<p>One of the problems related to entities is that you may want the parser to 795substitute an entity's content so that you can see the replacement text in 796your application. Or you may prefer to keep entity references as such in the 797content to be able to save the document back without losing this usually 798precious information (if the user went through the pain of explicitly defining 799entities, he may have a a rather negative attitude if you blindly susbtitute 800them as saving time). The <a 801href="gnome-xml-parser.html#XMLSUBSTITUTEENTITIESDEFAULT">xmlSubstituteEntitiesDefault()</a> 802function allows you to check and change the behaviour, which is to not 803substitute entities by default.</p> 804 805<p>Here is the DOM tree built by libxml for the previous document in the 806default case:</p> 807<pre>/gnome/src/gnome-xml -> /xmllint --debug test/ent1 808DOCUMENT 809version=1.0 810 ELEMENT EXAMPLE 811 TEXT 812 content= 813 ENTITY_REF 814 INTERNAL_GENERAL_ENTITY xml 815 content=Extensible Markup Language 816 TEXT 817 content=</pre> 818 819<p>And here is the result when substituting entities:</p> 820<pre>/gnome/src/gnome-xml -> /tester --debug --noent test/ent1 821DOCUMENT 822version=1.0 823 ELEMENT EXAMPLE 824 TEXT 825 content= Extensible Markup Language</pre> 826 827<p>So, entities or no entities? Basically, it depends on your use case. I 828suggest that you keep the non-substituting default behaviour and avoid using 829entities in your XML document or data if you are not willing to handle the 830entity references elements in the DOM tree.</p> 831 832<p>Note that at save time libxml enforce the conversion of the predefined 833entities where necessary to prevent well-formedness problems, and will also 834transparently replace those with chars (i.e., it will not generate entity 835reference elements in the DOM tree or call the reference() SAX callback when 836finding them in the input).</p> 837 838<h2><a name="Namespaces">Namespaces</a></h2> 839 840<p>The libxml library implements <a 841href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/">XML namespaces</a> support by 842recognizing namespace contructs in the input, and does namespace lookup 843automatically when building the DOM tree. A namespace declaration is 844associated with an in-memory structure and all elements or attributes within 845that namespace point to it. Hence testing the namespace is a simple and fast 846equality operation at the user level.</p> 847 848<p>I suggest that people using libxml use a namespace, and declare it in the 849root element of their document as the default namespace. Then they don't need 850to use the prefix in the content but we will have a basis for future semantic 851refinement and merging of data from different sources. This doesn't augment 852significantly the size of the XML output, but significantly increase its value 853in the long-term. Example:</p> 854<pre><mydoc xmlns="http://mydoc.example.org/schemas/"> 855 <elem1>...</elem1> 856 <elem2>...</elem2> 857</mydoc></pre> 858 859<p>Concerning the namespace value, this has to be an URL, but the URL doesn't 860have to point to any existing resource on the Web. It will bind all the 861element and atributes with that URL. I suggest to use an URL within a domain 862you control, and that the URL should contain some kind of version information 863if possible. For example, <code>"http://www.gnome.org/gnumeric/1.0/"</code> is 864a good namespace scheme.</p> 865 866<p>Then when you load a file, make sure that a namespace carrying the 867version-independent prefix is installed on the root element of your document, 868and if the version information don't match something you know, warn the user 869and be liberal in what you accept as the input. Also do *not* try to base 870namespace checking on the prefix value. <foo:text> may be exactly the same 871as <bar:text> in another document. What really matter is the URI associated 872with the element or the attribute, not the prefix string (which is just a 873shortcut for the full URI). In libxml element and attributes have a 874<code>ns</code> field pointing to an xmlNs structure detailing the namespace 875prefix and it's URI.</p> 876 877<p>@@Interfaces@@</p> 878 879<p>@@Examples@@</p> 880 881<p>Usually people object using namespace in the case of validation, I object 882this and will make sure that using namespaces won't break validity checking, 883so even is you plan to use or currently are using validation I strongly 884suggest adding namespaces to your document. A default namespace scheme 885<code>xmlns="http://...."</code> should not break validity even on less 886flexible parsers. Now using namespace to mix and differentiate content coming 887from multiple DTDs will certainly break current validation schemes. I will try 888to provide ways to do this, but this may not be portable or standardized.</p> 889 890<h2><a name="Validation">Validation, or are you afraid of DTDs ?</a></h2> 891 892<p>Well what is validation and what is a DTD ?</p> 893 894<p>Validation is the process of checking a document against a set of 895construction rules, a <strong>DTD</strong> (Document Type Definition) is such 896a set of rules.</p> 897 898<p>The validation process and building DTDs are the two most difficult parts 899of XML life cycle. Briefly a DTD defines all the possibles element to be 900found within your document, what is the formal shape of your document tree (by 901defining the allowed content of an element, either text, a regular expression 902for the allowed list of children, or mixed content i.e. both text and childs). 903The DTD also defines the allowed attributes for all elements and the types of 904the attributes. For more detailed informations, I suggest to read the related 905parts of the XML specification, the examples found under 906gnome-xml/test/valid/dtd and the large amount of books available on XML. The 907dia example in gnome-xml/test/valid should be both simple and complete enough 908to allow you to build your own.</p> 909 910<p>A word of warning, building a good DTD which will fit your needs of your 911application in the long-term is far from trivial, however the extra level of 912quality it can insure is well worth the price for some sets of applications or 913if you already have already a DTD defined for your application field.</p> 914 915<p>The validation is not completely finished but in a (very IMHO) usable 916state. Until a real validation interface is defined the way to do it is to 917define and set the <strong>xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue</strong> external 918variable to 1, this will of course be changed at some point:</p> 919 920<p>extern int xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue;</p> 921 922<p>...</p> 923 924<p>xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue = 1;</p> 925 926<p></p> 927 928<p>To handle external entities, use the function 929<strong>xmlSetExternalEntityLoader</strong>(xmlExternalEntityLoader f); to 930link in you HTTP/FTP/Entities database library to the standard libxml 931core.</p> 932 933<p>@@interfaces@@</p> 934 935<h2><a name="DOM"></a><a name="Principles">DOM Principles</a></h2> 936 937<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/DOM/">DOM</a> stands for the <em>Document Object 938Model</em> this is an API for accessing XML or HTML structured documents. 939Native support for DOM in Gnome is on the way (module gnome-dom), and it will 940be based on gnome-xml. This will be a far cleaner interface to manipulate XML 941files within Gnome since it won't expose the internal structure. DOM defines a 942set of IDL (or Java) interfaces allowing to traverse and manipulate a 943document. The DOM library will allow accessing and modifying "live" documents 944presents on other programs like this:</p> 945 946<p><img src="DOM.gif" alt=" DOM.gif "></p> 947 948<p>This should help greatly doing things like modifying a gnumeric spreadsheet 949embedded in a GWP document for example.</p> 950 951<p>The current DOM implementation on top of libxml is the <a 952href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gdome/">gdome Gnome module</a>, this is 953a full DOM interface, thanks to <a href="mailto:raph@levien.com">Raph 954Levien</a>.</p> 955 956<p>The gnome-dom module in the Gnome CVS base is obsolete</p> 957 958<h2><a name="Example"></a><a name="real">A real example</a></h2> 959 960<p>Here is a real size example, where the actual content of the application 961data is not kept in the DOM tree but uses internal structures. It is based on 962a proposal to keep a database of jobs related to Gnome, with an XML based 963storage structure. Here is an <a href="gjobs.xml">XML encoded jobs 964base</a>:</p> 965<pre><?xml version="1.0"?> 966<gjob:Helping xmlns:gjob="http://www.gnome.org/some-location"> 967 <gjob:Jobs> 968 969 <gjob:Job> 970 <gjob:Project ID="3"/> 971 <gjob:Application>GBackup</gjob:Application> 972 <gjob:Category>Development</gjob:Category> 973 974 <gjob:Update> 975 <gjob:Status>Open</gjob:Status> 976 <gjob:Modified>Mon, 07 Jun 1999 20:27:45 -0400 MET DST</gjob:Modified> 977 <gjob:Salary>USD 0.00</gjob:Salary> 978 </gjob:Update> 979 980 <gjob:Developers> 981 <gjob:Developer> 982 </gjob:Developer> 983 </gjob:Developers> 984 985 <gjob:Contact> 986 <gjob:Person>Nathan Clemons</gjob:Person> 987 <gjob:Email>nathan@windsofstorm.net</gjob:Email> 988 <gjob:Company> 989 </gjob:Company> 990 <gjob:Organisation> 991 </gjob:Organisation> 992 <gjob:Webpage> 993 </gjob:Webpage> 994 <gjob:Snailmail> 995 </gjob:Snailmail> 996 <gjob:Phone> 997 </gjob:Phone> 998 </gjob:Contact> 999 1000 <gjob:Requirements> 1001 The program should be released as free software, under the GPL. 1002 </gjob:Requirements> 1003 1004 <gjob:Skills> 1005 </gjob:Skills> 1006 1007 <gjob:Details> 1008 A GNOME based system that will allow a superuser to configure 1009 compressed and uncompressed files and/or file systems to be backed 1010 up with a supported media in the system. This should be able to 1011 perform via find commands generating a list of files that are passed 1012 to tar, dd, cpio, cp, gzip, etc., to be directed to the tape machine 1013 or via operations performed on the filesystem itself. Email 1014 notification and GUI status display very important. 1015 </gjob:Details> 1016 1017 </gjob:Job> 1018 1019 </gjob:Jobs> 1020</gjob:Helping></pre> 1021 1022<p>While loading the XML file into an internal DOM tree is a matter of calling 1023only a couple of functions, browsing the tree to gather the informations and 1024generate the internals structures is harder, and more error prone.</p> 1025 1026<p>The suggested principle is to be tolerant with respect to the input 1027structure. For example, the ordering of the attributes is not significant, 1028Cthe XML specification is clear about it. It's also usually a good idea to not 1029be dependent of the orders of the childs of a given node, unless it really 1030makes things harder. Here is some code to parse the informations for a 1031person:</p> 1032<pre>/* 1033 * A person record 1034 */ 1035typedef struct person { 1036 char *name; 1037 char *email; 1038 char *company; 1039 char *organisation; 1040 char *smail; 1041 char *webPage; 1042 char *phone; 1043} person, *personPtr; 1044 1045/* 1046 * And the code needed to parse it 1047 */ 1048personPtr parsePerson(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) { 1049 personPtr ret = NULL; 1050 1051DEBUG("parsePerson\n"); 1052 /* 1053 * allocate the struct 1054 */ 1055 ret = (personPtr) malloc(sizeof(person)); 1056 if (ret == NULL) { 1057 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n"); 1058 return(NULL); 1059 } 1060 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(person)); 1061 1062 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */ 1063 cur = cur->childs; 1064 while (cur != NULL) { 1065 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Person")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 1066 ret->name = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur->childs, 1); 1067 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Email")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 1068 ret->email = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur->childs, 1); 1069 cur = cur->next; 1070 } 1071 1072 return(ret); 1073}</pre> 1074 1075<p>Here is a couple of things to notice:</p> 1076<ul> 1077 <li>Usually a recursive parsing style is the more convenient one, XML data 1078 being by nature subject to repetitive constructs and usualy exibit highly 1079 stuctured patterns.</li> 1080 <li>The two arguments of type <em>xmlDocPtr</em> and <em>xmlNsPtr</em>, i.e. 1081 the pointer to the global XML document and the namespace reserved to the 1082 application. Document wide information are needed for example to decode 1083 entities and it's a good coding practice to define a namespace for your 1084 application set of data and test that the element and attributes you're 1085 analyzing actually pertains to your application space. This is done by a 1086 simple equality test (cur->ns == ns).</li> 1087 <li>To retrieve text and attributes value, it is suggested to use the 1088 function <em>xmlNodeListGetString</em> to gather all the text and entity 1089 reference nodes generated by the DOM output and produce an single text 1090 string.</li> 1091</ul> 1092 1093<p>Here is another piece of code used to parse another level of the 1094structure:</p> 1095<pre>#include <libxml/tree.h> 1096/* 1097 * a Description for a Job 1098 */ 1099typedef struct job { 1100 char *projectID; 1101 char *application; 1102 char *category; 1103 personPtr contact; 1104 int nbDevelopers; 1105 personPtr developers[100]; /* using dynamic alloc is left as an exercise */ 1106} job, *jobPtr; 1107 1108/* 1109 * And the code needed to parse it 1110 */ 1111jobPtr parseJob(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) { 1112 jobPtr ret = NULL; 1113 1114DEBUG("parseJob\n"); 1115 /* 1116 * allocate the struct 1117 */ 1118 ret = (jobPtr) malloc(sizeof(job)); 1119 if (ret == NULL) { 1120 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n"); 1121 return(NULL); 1122 } 1123 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(job)); 1124 1125 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */ 1126 cur = cur->childs; 1127 while (cur != NULL) { 1128 1129 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Project")) && (cur->ns == ns)) { 1130 ret->projectID = xmlGetProp(cur, "ID"); 1131 if (ret->projectID == NULL) { 1132 fprintf(stderr, "Project has no ID\n"); 1133 } 1134 } 1135 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Application")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 1136 ret->application = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur->childs, 1); 1137 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Category")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 1138 ret->category = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur->childs, 1); 1139 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Contact")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 1140 ret->contact = parsePerson(doc, ns, cur); 1141 cur = cur->next; 1142 } 1143 1144 return(ret); 1145}</pre> 1146 1147<p>One can notice that once used to it, writing this kind of code is quite 1148simple, but boring. Ultimately, it could be possble to write stubbers taking 1149either C data structure definitions, a set of XML examples or an XML DTD and 1150produce the code needed to import and export the content between C data and 1151XML storage. This is left as an exercise to the reader :-)</p> 1152 1153<p>Feel free to use <a href="gjobread.c">the code for the full C parsing 1154example</a> as a template, it is also available with Makefile in the Gnome CVS 1155base under gnome-xml/example</p> 1156 1157<h2><a name="Contributi">Contributions</a></h2> 1158<ul> 1159 <li><a href="mailto:ari@btigate.com">Ari Johnson</a> provides a C++ wrapper 1160 for libxml: 1161 <p>Website: <a 1162 href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/</a></p> 1163 <p>Download: <a 1164 href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/libxml++.tar.gz">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/libxml++.tar.gz</a></p> 1165 </li> 1166 <li><a href="mailto:doolin@cs.utk.edu">David Doolin</a> provides a 1167 precompiled Windows version 1168 <p><a 1169 href="http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~doolin/code/libxmlwin32/">http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~doolin/code/libxmlwin32/</a></p> 1170 </li> 1171 <li><a href="mailto:fnatter@gmx.net">Felix Natter</a> provided <a 1172 href="libxml-doc.el">an emacs module</a> to lookup libxml functions 1173 documentation</li> 1174 <li><a href="mailto:sherwin@nlm.nih.gov">Ziying Sherwin</a> provided <a 1175 href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages/0488.html">man pages</a> (not yet 1176 integrated in the distribution)</li> 1177</ul> 1178 1179<p></p> 1180 1181<p><a href="mailto:Daniel.Veillard@w3.org">Daniel Veillard</a></p> 1182 1183<p>$Id: xml.html,v 1.35 2000/06/30 17:58:22 veillard Exp $</p> 1184</body> 1185</html> 1186