Gitiles
Code Review Sign In
gerrit-public.fairphone.software / fp2-dev / platform / external / libxml2 / 60087f30f3b4cf21de48f39181736e7d71e7a661 / . / doc / xml.html
blob: dd94bed884e07575ae01c8b26de719bec446049a [file] [log] [blame]
Daniel Veillard09ab7e12001-07-10 15:49:44 +0000[diff] [blame]1<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
2 "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]3<html>
4<head>
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]5 <title>The XML C library for Gnome</title>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]6 <meta name="GENERATOR" content="amaya V5.0">
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]7 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html">
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]8</head>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]9
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]10<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]11<p><a href="http://www.gnome.org/"><img src="smallfootonly.gif"
12alt="Gnome Logo"></a><a href="http://www.w3.org/Status"><img src="w3c.png"
Daniel Veillardb370a742001-06-09 16:58:47 +0000[diff] [blame]13alt="W3C Logo"></a><a href="http://www.redhat.com"><img src="redhat.gif"
14alt="Red Hat Logo"></a></p>
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]15
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]16<h1 align="center">The XML C library for Gnome</h1>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]17
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]18<h2 style="text-align: center">libxml, a.k.a. gnome-xml</h2>
19
20<p></p>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]21<ul>
22 <li><a href="#Introducti">Introduction</a></li>
23 <li><a href="#Documentat">Documentation</a></li>
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]24 <li><a href="#Reporting">Reporting bugs and getting help</a></li>
25 <li><a href="#help">how to help</a></li>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]26 <li><a href="#Downloads">Downloads</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]27 <li><a href="#News">News</a></li>
28 <li><a href="#XML">XML</a></li>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]29 <li><a href="#XSLT">XSLT</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]30 <li><a href="#tree">The tree output</a></li>
31 <li><a href="#interface">The SAX interface</a></li>
32 <li><a href="#library">The XML library interfaces</a>
33 <ul>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]34 <li><a href="#Invoking">Invoking the parser: the pull way</a></li>
35 <li><a href="#Invoking">Invoking the parser: the push way</a></li>
36 <li><a href="#Invoking2">Invoking the parser: the SAX interface</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]37 <li><a href="#Building">Building a tree from scratch</a></li>
38 <li><a href="#Traversing">Traversing the tree</a></li>
39 <li><a href="#Modifying">Modifying the tree</a></li>
40 <li><a href="#Saving">Saving the tree</a></li>
41 <li><a href="#Compressio">Compression</a></li>
42 </ul>
43 </li>
44 <li><a href="#Entities">Entities or no entities</a></li>
45 <li><a href="#Namespaces">Namespaces</a></li>
46 <li><a href="#Validation">Validation</a></li>
47 <li><a href="#Principles">DOM principles</a></li>
48 <li><a href="#real">A real example</a></li>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000[diff] [blame]49 <li><a href="#Contributi">Contributions</a></li>
50</ul>
51
52<p>Separate documents:</p>
53<ul>
54 <li><a href="upgrade.html">upgrade instructions for migrating to
55 libxml2</a></li>
56 <li><a href="encoding.html">libxml Internationalization support</a></li>
57 <li><a href="xmlio.html">libxml Input/Output interfaces</a></li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]58 <li><a href="xmlmem.html">libxml Memory interfaces</a></li>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000[diff] [blame]59 <li><a href="catalog.html">libxml Catalog support</a></li>
Daniel Veillard300f7d62000-11-24 13:04:04 +0000[diff] [blame]60 <li><a href="xmldtd.html">a short introduction about DTDs and
61 libxml</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]62 <li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/">the libxslt page</a></li>
Daniel Veillard7b06bcb2001-06-22 16:03:51 +0000[diff] [blame]63 <li><a href="http://www.cs.unibo.it/~casarini/gdome2/">the gdome2 page: a
64 standard DOM interface for libxml2</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]65</ul>
66
67<h2><a name="Introducti">Introduction</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]68
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]69<p>This document describes libxml, the <a
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]70href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML</a> C library developped for the <a
71href="http://www.gnome.org/">Gnome</a> project. <a
72href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML is a standard</a> for building tag-based
73structured documents/data.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]74
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]75<p>Here are some key points about libxml:</p>
76<ul>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]77 <li>Libxml exports Push and Pull type parser interfaces for both XML and
78 HTML.</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]79 <li>Libxml can do DTD validation at parse time, using a parsed document
80 instance, or with an arbitrary DTD.</li>
81 <li>Libxml now includes nearly complete <a
Daniel Veillard8c2ecaf2001-07-10 17:53:07 +0000[diff] [blame]82 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath">XPath</a>, <a
83 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr">XPointer</a> and <a
84 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude">XInclude</a> implementations.</li>
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]85 <li>It is written in plain C, making as few assumptions as possible, and
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]86 sticking closely to ANSI C/POSIX for easy embedding. Works on
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]87 Linux/Unix/Windows, ported to a number of other platforms.</li>
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]88 <li>Basic support for HTTP and FTP client allowing aplications to fetch
89 remote resources</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]90 <li>The design is modular, most of the extensions can be compiled out.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]91 <li>The internal document repesentation is as close as possible to the <a
92 href="http://www.w3.org/DOM/">DOM</a> interfaces.</li>
93 <li>Libxml also has a <a href="http://www.megginson.com/SAX/index.html">SAX
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]94 like interface</a>; the interface is designed to be compatible with <a
95 href="http://www.jclark.com/xml/expat.html">Expat</a>.</li>
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]96 <li>This library is released both under the <a
97 href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software-19980720.html">W3C
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]98 IPR</a> and the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html">GNU
99 LGPL</a>. Use either at your convenience, basically this should make
100 everybody happy, if not, drop me a mail.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]101</ul>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]102
Daniel Veillarde0c1d722001-03-21 10:28:36 +0000[diff] [blame]103<p>Warning: unless you are forced to because your application links with a
104Gnome library requiring it, <strong><span
105style="background-color: #FF0000">Do Not Use libxml1</span></strong>, use
106libxml2</p>
107
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]108<h2><a name="Documentat">Documentation</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]109
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]110<p>There are some on-line resources about using libxml:</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]111<ol>
Daniel Veillard365e13b2000-07-02 07:56:37 +0000[diff] [blame]112 <li>Check the <a href="FAQ.html">FAQ</a></li>
Daniel Veillardc19fccc2000-07-03 11:52:01 +0000[diff] [blame]113 <li>Check the <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-lib.html">extensive
Daniel Veillard8c6d6af2000-08-25 17:14:13 +0000[diff] [blame]114 documentation</a> automatically extracted from code comments (using <a
115 href="http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&amp;dir=gtk-doc">gtk
116 doc</a>).</li>
Daniel Veillard8d869642000-07-14 12:12:59 +0000[diff] [blame]117 <li>Look at the documentation about <a href="encoding.html">libxml
118 internationalization support</a></li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]119 <li>This page provides a global overview and <a href="#real">some
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]120 examples</a> on how to use libxml.</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]121 <li><a href="mailto:james@daa.com.au">James Henstridge</a>
122 wrote <a
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]123 href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">some nice
124 documentation</a> explaining how to use the libxml SAX interface.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]125 <li>George Lebl wrote <a
126 href="http://www-4.ibm.com/software/developer/library/gnome3/">an article
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]127 for IBM developerWorks</a> about using libxml.</li>
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]128 <li>Check <a href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gnome-xml/TODO">the TODO
129 file</a></li>
130 <li>Read the <a href="upgrade.html">1.x to 2.x upgrade path</a>. If you are
131 starting a new project using libxml you should really use the 2.x
132 version.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]133 <li>And don't forget to look at the <a href="/messages/">mailing-list
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]134 archive</a>.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]135</ol>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]136
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]137<h2><a name="Reporting">Reporting bugs and getting help</a></h2>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]138
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]139<p>Well, bugs or missing features are always possible, and I will make a
140point of fixing them in a timely fashion. The best way to report a bug is to
141use the <a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml">Gnome
142bug tracking database</a> (make sure to use the "libxml" module name). I look
143at reports there regularly and it's good to have a reminder when a bug is
144still open. Check the <a
145href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/bugwritinghelp.html">instructions on
146reporting bugs</a> and be sure to specify that the bug is for the package
147libxml.</p>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]148
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]149<p>There is also a mailing-list <a
Daniel Veillard3197f162001-04-04 00:40:08 +0000[diff] [blame]150href="mailto:xml@gnome.org">xml@gnome.org</a> for libxml, with an <a
151href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/">on-line archive</a> (<a
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]152href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages">old</a>). To subscribe to this list,
153please visit the <a
154href="http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/xml">associated Web</a> page and
155follow the instructions. <strong>Do not send code, I won't debug it</strong>
156(but patches are really appreciated!).</p>
Daniel Veillard234547b2001-07-05 09:46:10 +0000[diff] [blame]157
Daniel Veillard008186f2001-09-13 14:24:44 +0000[diff] [blame]158<p>Check the following <strong><span style="color: #FF0000">before
159posting</span></strong>:</p>
Daniel Veillard234547b2001-07-05 09:46:10 +0000[diff] [blame]160<ul>
Daniel Veillarddadd0872001-09-15 09:21:44 +0000[diff] [blame]161 <li>read the <a href="FAQ.html">FAQ</a></li>
Daniel Veillard234547b2001-07-05 09:46:10 +0000[diff] [blame]162 <li>make sure you are <a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">using a recent
163 version</a>, and that the problem still shows up in those</li>
164 <li>check the <a href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/">list
165 archives</a> to see if the problem was reported already, in this case
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000[diff] [blame]166 there is probably a fix available, similary check the <a
167 href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml">registered
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]168 open bugs</a></li>
Daniel Veillard234547b2001-07-05 09:46:10 +0000[diff] [blame]169 <li>make sure you can reproduce the bug with xmllint or one of the test
170 programs found in source in the distribution</li>
171 <li>Please send the command showing the error as well as the input (as an
172 attachement)</li>
173</ul>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]174
Daniel Veillarddadd0872001-09-15 09:21:44 +0000[diff] [blame]175<p>Then send the bug with associated informations to reproduce it to the <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]176href="mailto:xml@gnome.org">xml@gnome.org</a> list; if it's really libxml
Daniel Veillard008186f2001-09-13 14:24:44 +0000[diff] [blame]177related I will approve it.. Please do not send me mail directly, it makes
178things really harder to track and in some cases I'm not the best person to
179answer a given question, ask the list instead.</p>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]180
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]181<p>Of course, bugs reported with a suggested patch for fixing them will
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]182probably be processed faster.</p>
183
184<p>If you're looking for help, a quick look at <a
Daniel Veillardf7ed3362001-08-17 12:01:21 +0000[diff] [blame]185href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/">the list archive</a> may actually
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]186provide the answer, I usually send source samples when answering libxml usage
Daniel Veillard6f0adb52000-07-03 11:41:26 +0000[diff] [blame]187questions. The <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/book1.html">auto-generated
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]188documentantion</a> is not as polished as I would like (i need to learn more
189about Docbook), but it's a good starting point.</p>
190
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]191<h2><a name="help">How to help</a></h2>
192
193<p>You can help the project in various ways, the best thing to do first is to
194subscribe to the mailing-list as explained before, check the <a
Daniel Veillardf7ed3362001-08-17 12:01:21 +0000[diff] [blame]195href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/">archives </a>and the <a
196href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml">Gnome bug
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]197database:</a>:</p>
198<ol>
199 <li>provide patches when you find problems</li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]200 <li>provide the diffs when you port libxml to a new platform. They may not
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]201 be integrated in all cases but help pinpointing portability problems
202 and</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]203 <li>provide documentation fixes (either as patches to the code comments or
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]204 as HTML diffs).</li>
205 <li>provide new documentations pieces (translations, examples, etc ...)</li>
206 <li>Check the TODO file and try to close one of the items</li>
207 <li>take one of the points raised in the archive or the bug database and
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000[diff] [blame]208 provide a fix. <a href="mailto:daniel@veillard.com">Get in touch with me
209 </a>before to avoid synchronization problems and check that the suggested
210 fix will fit in nicely :-)</li>
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]211</ol>
212
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]213<h2><a name="Downloads">Downloads</a></h2>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]214
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]215<p>The latest versions of libxml can be found on <a
Daniel Veillard20c8cf22001-06-26 22:47:36 +0000[diff] [blame]216href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">xmlsoft.org</a> (<a
217href="ftp://speakeasy.rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/">Seattle</a>, <a
218href="ftp://fr.rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/">France</a>) or on the <a
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]219href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/MIRRORS.html">Gnome FTP server</a> either
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]220as a <a href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/libxml/">source
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]221archive</a> or <a
Daniel Veillarda41123c2001-04-22 19:31:20 +0000[diff] [blame]222href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/redhat/i386/libxml/">RPM
223packages</a>. (NOTE that you need both the <a
Daniel Veillardc19fccc2000-07-03 11:52:01 +0000[diff] [blame]224href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2.html">libxml(2)</a> and <a
225href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2-devel.html">libxml(2)-devel</a>
Daniel Veillard95189532001-07-26 18:30:26 +0000[diff] [blame]226packages installed to compile applications using libxml.) <a
227href="mailto:izlatkovic@daenet.de">Igor Zlatkovic</a> is now the maintainer
228of the Windows port, <a
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]229href="http://www.fh-frankfurt.de/~igor/projects/libxml/index.html">he
230provides binaries</a></p>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]231
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]232<p><a name="Snapshot">Snapshot:</a></p>
233<ul>
234 <li>Code from the W3C cvs base libxml <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]235 href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/cvs-snapshot.tar.gz">cvs-snapshot.tar.gz</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]236 <li>Docs, content of the web site, the list archive included <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]237 href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml-docs.tar.gz">libxml-docs.tar.gz</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]238</ul>
239
240<p><a name="Contribs">Contribs:</a></p>
241
242<p>I do accept external contributions, especially if compiling on another
243platform, get in touch with me to upload the package. I will keep them in the
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]244<a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/contribs/">contrib directory</a></p>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]245
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]246<p>Libxml is also available from CVS:</p>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]247<ul>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]248 <li><p>The <a
249 href="http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&amp;dir=gnome-xml">Gnome
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]250 CVS base</a>. Check the <a
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]251 href="http://developer.gnome.org/tools/cvs.html">Gnome CVS Tools</a>
252 page; the CVS module is <b>gnome-xml</b>.</p>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]253 </li>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]254 <li>The <strong>libxslt</strong> module is also present there</li>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]255</ul>
256
257<h2><a name="News">News</a></h2>
258
Daniel Veillard944b5ff1999-12-15 19:08:24 +0000[diff] [blame]259<h3>CVS only : check the <a
260href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gnome-xml/ChangeLog">Changelog</a> file
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]261for a really accurate description</h3>
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]262
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]263<p>Items floating around but not actively worked on, get in touch with me if
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]264you want to test those</p>
265<ul>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]266 <li>Implementing <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT">XSLT</a>, this is done
267 as a separate C library on top of libxml called libxslt</li>
Daniel Veillard28929b22000-11-13 18:22:49 +0000[diff] [blame]268 <li>Finishing up <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr">XPointer</a> and <a
269 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude">XInclude</a></li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]270 <li>(seeems working but delayed from release) parsing/import of Docbook
271 SGML docs</li>
272</ul>
273
Daniel Veillard60087f32001-10-10 09:45:09 +0000[diff] [blame^]274<h3>2.4.6: Oct 10 2001</h3>
275<ul>
276 <li>added and updated man pages by John Fleck</li>
277 <li>portability and configure fixes</li>
278 <li>an infinite loop on the HTML parser was removed (William)</li>
279 <li>Windows makefile patches from Igor</li>
280 <li>fixed half a dozen bugs reported fof libxml or libxslt</li>
281 <li>updated xmlcatalog to be able to modify SGML super catalogs</li>
282</ul>
283
Daniel Veillarddadd0872001-09-15 09:21:44 +0000[diff] [blame]284<h3>2.4.5: Sep 14 2001</h3>
285<ul>
286 <li>Remove a few annoying bugs in 2.4.4</li>
287 <li>forces the HTML serializer to output decimal charrefs since some
288 version of Netscape can't handle hexadecimal ones</li>
289</ul>
290
291<h3>1.8.16: Sep 14 2001</h3>
292<ul>
293 <li>maintenance release of the old libxml1 branch, couple of bug and
294 portability fixes</li>
295</ul>
296
Daniel Veillard04382ae2001-09-12 18:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]297<h3>2.4.4: Sep 12 2001</h3>
298<ul>
299 <li>added --convert to xmlcatalog, bug fixes and cleanups of XML
300 Catalog</li>
301 <li>a few bug fixes and some portability changes</li>
302 <li>some documentation cleanups</li>
303</ul>
304
Daniel Veillard39936902001-08-24 00:49:01 +0000[diff] [blame]305<h3>2.4.3: Aug 23 2001</h3>
306<ul>
307 <li>XML Catalog support see the doc</li>
308 <li>New NaN/Infinity floating point code</li>
309 <li>A few bug fixes</li>
310</ul>
311
312<h3>2.4.2: Aug 15 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]313<ul>
314 <li>adds xmlLineNumbersDefault() to control line number generation</li>
315 <li>lot of bug fixes</li>
316 <li>the Microsoft MSC projects files shuld now be up to date</li>
317 <li>inheritance of namespaces from DTD defaulted attributes</li>
318 <li>fixes a serious potential security bug</li>
319 <li>added a --format option to xmllint</li>
320</ul>
321
322<h3>2.4.1: July 24 2001</h3>
323<ul>
324 <li>possibility to keep line numbers in the tree</li>
325 <li>some computation NaN fixes</li>
326 <li>extension of the XPath API</li>
327 <li>cleanup for alpha and ia64 targets</li>
328 <li>patch to allow saving through HTTP PUT or POST</li>
Daniel Veillard09ab7e12001-07-10 15:49:44 +0000[diff] [blame]329</ul>
330
331<h3>2.4.0: July 10 2001</h3>
332<ul>
333 <li>Fixed a few bugs in XPath, validation, and tree handling.</li>
334 <li>Fixed XML Base implementation, added a coupel of examples to the
335 regression tests</li>
336 <li>A bit of cleanup</li>
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]337</ul>
338
Daniel Veillard5b43fde2001-07-05 23:31:40 +0000[diff] [blame]339<h3>2.3.14: July 5 2001</h3>
340<ul>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]341 <li>fixed some entities problems and reduce mem requirement when
342 substituing them</li>
Daniel Veillard5b43fde2001-07-05 23:31:40 +0000[diff] [blame]343 <li>lots of improvements in the XPath queries interpreter can be
344 substancially faster</li>
345 <li>Makefiles and configure cleanups</li>
346 <li>Fixes to XPath variable eval, and compare on empty node set</li>
347 <li>HTML tag closing bug fixed</li>
348 <li>Fixed an URI reference computating problem when validating</li>
349</ul>
350
Daniel Veillard2adbb512001-06-28 16:20:36 +0000[diff] [blame]351<h3>2.3.13: June 28 2001</h3>
352<ul>
353 <li>2.3.12 configure.in was broken as well as the push mode XML parser</li>
354 <li>a few more fixes for compilation on Windows MSC by Yon Derek</li>
355</ul>
356
357<h3>1.8.14: June 28 2001</h3>
358<ul>
359 <li>Zbigniew Chyla gave a patch to use the old XML parser in push mode</li>
360 <li>Small Makefile fix</li>
361</ul>
362
Daniel Veillard11648102001-06-26 16:08:24 +0000[diff] [blame]363<h3>2.3.12: June 26 2001</h3>
364<ul>
365 <li>lots of cleanup</li>
366 <li>a couple of validation fix</li>
367 <li>fixed line number counting</li>
368 <li>fixed serious problems in the XInclude processing</li>
369 <li>added support for UTF8 BOM at beginning of entities</li>
370 <li>fixed a strange gcc optimizer bugs in xpath handling of float, gcc-3.0
371 miscompile uri.c (William), Thomas Leitner provided a fix for the
372 optimizer on Tru64</li>
373 <li>incorporated Yon Derek and Igor Zlatkovic fixes and improvements for
374 compilation on Windows MSC</li>
375 <li>update of libxml-doc.el (Felix Natter)</li>
376 <li>fixed 2 bugs in URI normalization code</li>
377</ul>
378
Daniel Veillarde3c81b52001-06-17 14:50:34 +0000[diff] [blame]379<h3>2.3.11: June 17 2001</h3>
380<ul>
381 <li>updates to trio, Makefiles and configure should fix some portability
382 problems (alpha)</li>
383 <li>fixed some HTML serialization problems (pre, script, and block/inline
384 handling), added encoding aware APIs, cleanup of this code</li>
385 <li>added xmlHasNsProp()</li>
386 <li>implemented a specific PI for encoding support in the DocBook SGML
387 parser</li>
388 <li>some XPath fixes (-Infinity, / as a function parameter and namespaces
389 node selection)</li>
390 <li>fixed a performance problem and an error in the validation code</li>
391 <li>fixed XInclude routine to implement the recursive behaviour</li>
392 <li>fixed xmlFreeNode problem when libxml is included statically twice</li>
393 <li>added --version to xmllint for bug reports</li>
394</ul>
395
Daniel Veillard2e4f1882001-06-01 10:11:57 +0000[diff] [blame]396<h3>2.3.10: June 1 2001</h3>
397<ul>
398 <li>fixed the SGML catalog support</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]399 <li>a number of reported bugs got fixed, in XPath, iconv detection,
400 XInclude processing</li>
Daniel Veillard2e4f1882001-06-01 10:11:57 +0000[diff] [blame]401 <li>XPath string function should now handle unicode correctly</li>
402</ul>
403
Daniel Veillard4623acd2001-05-19 15:13:15 +0000[diff] [blame]404<h3>2.3.9: May 19 2001</h3>
405
406<p>Lots of bugfixes, and added a basic SGML catalog support:</p>
407<ul>
408 <li>HTML push bugfix #54891 and another patch from Jonas Borgström</li>
409 <li>some serious speed optimisation again</li>
410 <li>some documentation cleanups</li>
411 <li>trying to get better linking on solaris (-R)</li>
412 <li>XPath API cleanup from Thomas Broyer</li>
413 <li>Validation bug fixed #54631, added a patch from Gary Pennington, fixed
414 xmlValidGetValidElements()</li>
415 <li>Added an INSTALL file</li>
416 <li>Attribute removal added to API: #54433</li>
417 <li>added a basic support for SGML catalogs</li>
418 <li>fixed xmlKeepBlanksDefault(0) API</li>
419 <li>bugfix in xmlNodeGetLang()</li>
420 <li>fixed a small configure portability problem</li>
421 <li>fixed an inversion of SYSTEM and PUBLIC identifier in HTML document</li>
422</ul>
423
Daniel Veillarda265af72001-05-14 11:13:58 +0000[diff] [blame]424<h3>1.8.13: May 14 2001</h3>
425<ul>
426 <li>bugfixes release of the old libxml1 branch used by Gnome</li>
427</ul>
428
Daniel Veillard3bbbe6f2001-05-03 11:15:37 +0000[diff] [blame]429<h3>2.3.8: May 3 2001</h3>
430<ul>
431 <li>Integrated an SGML DocBook parser for the Gnome project</li>
432 <li>Fixed a few things in the HTML parser</li>
433 <li>Fixed some XPath bugs raised by XSLT use, tried to fix the floating
434 point portability issue</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]435 <li>Speed improvement (8M/s for SAX, 3M/s for DOM, 1.5M/s for
436 DOM+validation using the XML REC as input and a 700MHz celeron).</li>
Daniel Veillard3bbbe6f2001-05-03 11:15:37 +0000[diff] [blame]437 <li>incorporated more Windows cleanup</li>
438 <li>added xmlSaveFormatFile()</li>
439 <li>fixed problems in copying nodes with entities references (gdome)</li>
440 <li>removed some troubles surrounding the new validation module</li>
441</ul>
442
Daniel Veillarda41123c2001-04-22 19:31:20 +0000[diff] [blame]443<h3>2.3.7: April 22 2001</h3>
444<ul>
445 <li>lots of small bug fixes, corrected XPointer</li>
446 <li>Non determinist content model validation support</li>
447 <li>added xmlDocCopyNode for gdome2</li>
448 <li>revamped the way the HTML parser handles end of tags</li>
449 <li>XPath: corrctions of namespacessupport and number formatting</li>
450 <li>Windows: Igor Zlatkovic patches for MSC compilation</li>
451 <li>HTML ouput fixes from P C Chow and William M. Brack</li>
452 <li>Improved validation speed sensible for DocBook</li>
453 <li>fixed a big bug with ID declared in external parsed entities</li>
454 <li>portability fixes, update of Trio from Bjorn Reese</li>
455</ul>
456
Daniel Veillardafc73112001-04-11 11:51:41 +0000[diff] [blame]457<h3>2.3.6: April 8 2001</h3>
458<ul>
459 <li>Code cleanup using extreme gcc compiler warning options, found and
460 cleared half a dozen potential problem</li>
461 <li>the Eazel team found an XML parser bug</li>
462 <li>cleaned up the user of some of the string formatting function. used the
463 trio library code to provide the one needed when the platform is missing
464 them</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]465 <li>xpath: removed a memory leak and fixed the predicate evaluation
466 problem, extended the testsuite and cleaned up the result. XPointer seems
467 broken ...</li>
Daniel Veillardafc73112001-04-11 11:51:41 +0000[diff] [blame]468</ul>
469
Daniel Veillard56a4cb82001-03-24 17:00:36 +0000[diff] [blame]470<h3>2.3.5: Mar 23 2001</h3>
471<ul>
472 <li>Biggest change is separate parsing and evaluation of XPath expressions,
473 there is some new APIs for this too</li>
474 <li>included a number of bug fixes(XML push parser, 51876, notations,
475 52299)</li>
476 <li>Fixed some portability issues</li>
477</ul>
478
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame]479<h3>2.3.4: Mar 10 2001</h3>
480<ul>
481 <li>Fixed bugs #51860 and #51861</li>
482 <li>Added a global variable xmlDefaultBufferSize to allow default buffer
483 size to be application tunable.</li>
484 <li>Some cleanup in the validation code, still a bug left and this part
485 should probably be rewritten to support ambiguous content model :-\</li>
486 <li>Fix a couple of serious bugs introduced or raised by changes in 2.3.3
487 parser</li>
488 <li>Fixed another bug in xmlNodeGetContent()</li>
489 <li>Bjorn fixed XPath node collection and Number formatting</li>
490 <li>Fixed a loop reported in the HTML parsing</li>
491 <li>blank space are reported even if the Dtd content model proves that they
492 are formatting spaces, this is for XmL conformance</li>
493</ul>
494
Daniel Veillardb402c072001-03-01 17:28:58 +0000[diff] [blame]495<h3>2.3.3: Mar 1 2001</h3>
496<ul>
497 <li>small change in XPath for XSLT</li>
498 <li>documentation cleanups</li>
499 <li>fix in validation by Gary Pennington</li>
500 <li>serious parsing performances improvements</li>
501</ul>
502
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]503<h3>2.3.2: Feb 24 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard71681102001-02-24 17:48:53 +0000[diff] [blame]504<ul>
505 <li>chasing XPath bugs, found a bunch, completed some TODO</li>
506 <li>fixed a Dtd parsing bug</li>
507 <li>fixed a bug in xmlNodeGetContent</li>
508 <li>ID/IDREF support partly rewritten by Gary Pennington</li>
509</ul>
510
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]511<h3>2.3.1: Feb 15 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]512<ul>
513 <li>some XPath and HTML bug fixes for XSLT</li>
514 <li>small extension of the hash table interfaces for DOM gdome2
515 implementation</li>
516 <li>A few bug fixes</li>
517</ul>
518
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]519<h3>2.3.0: Feb 8 2001 (2.2.12 was on 25 Jan but I didn't kept track)</h3>
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]520<ul>
521 <li>Lots of XPath bug fixes</li>
522 <li>Add a mode with Dtd lookup but without validation error reporting for
523 XSLT</li>
524 <li>Add support for text node without escaping (XSLT)</li>
525 <li>bug fixes for xmlCheckFilename</li>
526 <li>validation code bug fixes from Gary Pennington</li>
527 <li>Patch from Paul D. Smith correcting URI path normalization</li>
528 <li>Patch to allow simultaneous install of libxml-devel and
529 libxml2-devel</li>
530 <li>the example Makefile is now fixed</li>
531 <li>added HTML to the RPM packages</li>
532 <li>tree copying bugfixes</li>
533 <li>updates to Windows makefiles</li>
534 <li>optimisation patch from Bjorn Reese</li>
535</ul>
536
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]537<h3>2.2.11: Jan 4 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard503b8932001-01-05 06:36:31 +0000[diff] [blame]538<ul>
539 <li>bunch of bug fixes (memory I/O, xpath, ftp/http, ...)</li>
540 <li>added htmlHandleOmittedElem()</li>
541 <li>Applied Bjorn Reese's IPV6 first patch</li>
542 <li>Applied Paul D. Smith patches for validation of XInclude results</li>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]543 <li>added XPointer xmlns() new scheme support</li>
Daniel Veillard503b8932001-01-05 06:36:31 +0000[diff] [blame]544</ul>
545
Daniel Veillard2ddd23d2000-11-25 10:42:19 +0000[diff] [blame]546<h3>2.2.10: Nov 25 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard9d343c42000-11-25 10:12:43 +0000[diff] [blame]547<ul>
548 <li>Fix the Windows problems of 2.2.8</li>
549 <li>integrate OpenVMS patches</li>
550 <li>better handling of some nasty HTML input</li>
551 <li>Improved the XPointer implementation</li>
552 <li>integrate a number of provided patches</li>
553</ul>
554
Daniel Veillard2ddd23d2000-11-25 10:42:19 +0000[diff] [blame]555<h3>2.2.9: Nov 25 2000</h3>
556<ul>
557 <li>erroneous release :-(</li>
558</ul>
559
Daniel Veillard28929b22000-11-13 18:22:49 +0000[diff] [blame]560<h3>2.2.8: Nov 13 2000</h3>
561<ul>
562 <li>First version of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude">XInclude</a>
563 support</li>
564 <li>Patch in conditional section handling</li>
565 <li>updated MS compiler project</li>
566 <li>fixed some XPath problems</li>
567 <li>added an URI escaping function</li>
568 <li>some other bug fixes</li>
569</ul>
570
571<h3>2.2.7: Oct 31 2000</h3>
572<ul>
573 <li>added message redirection</li>
574 <li>XPath improvements (thanks TOM !)</li>
575 <li>xmlIOParseDTD() added</li>
576 <li>various small fixes in the HTML, URI, HTTP and XPointer support</li>
577 <li>some cleanup of the Makefile, autoconf and the distribution content</li>
578</ul>
579
Daniel Veillard29a11cc2000-10-25 13:32:39 +0000[diff] [blame]580<h3>2.2.6: Oct 25 2000:</h3>
581<ul>
582 <li>Added an hash table module, migrated a number of internal structure to
583 those</li>
584 <li>Fixed a posteriori validation problems</li>
585 <li>HTTP module cleanups</li>
586 <li>HTML parser improvements (tag errors, script/style handling, attribute
587 normalization)</li>
588 <li>coalescing of adjacent text nodes</li>
589 <li>couple of XPath bug fixes, exported the internal API</li>
590</ul>
591
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]592<h3>2.2.5: Oct 15 2000:</h3>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]593<ul>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]594 <li>XPointer implementation and testsuite</li>
595 <li>Lot of XPath fixes, added variable and functions registration, more
596 tests</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]597 <li>Portability fixes, lots of enhancements toward an easy Windows build
598 and release</li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]599 <li>Late validation fixes</li>
600 <li>Integrated a lot of contributed patches</li>
601 <li>added memory management docs</li>
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]602 <li>a performance problem when using large buffer seems fixed</li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]603</ul>
604
605<h3>2.2.4: Oct 1 2000:</h3>
606<ul>
607 <li>main XPath problem fixed</li>
608 <li>Integrated portability patches for Windows</li>
609 <li>Serious bug fixes on the URI and HTML code</li>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]610</ul>
611
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]612<h3>2.2.3: Sep 17 2000</h3>
613<ul>
614 <li>bug fixes</li>
615 <li>cleanup of entity handling code</li>
616 <li>overall review of all loops in the parsers, all sprintf usage has been
617 checked too</li>
618 <li>Far better handling of larges Dtd. Validating against Docbook XML Dtd
619 works smoothly now.</li>
620</ul>
621
622<h3>1.8.10: Sep 6 2000</h3>
623<ul>
624 <li>bug fix release for some Gnome projects</li>
625</ul>
626
627<h3>2.2.2: August 12 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard786d7c82000-08-12 23:38:57 +0000[diff] [blame]628<ul>
629 <li>mostly bug fixes</li>
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]630 <li>started adding routines to access xml parser context options</li>
Daniel Veillard786d7c82000-08-12 23:38:57 +0000[diff] [blame]631</ul>
632
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]633<h3>2.2.1: July 21 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillarda2679fa2000-07-22 02:38:15 +0000[diff] [blame]634<ul>
635 <li>a purely bug fixes release</li>
636 <li>fixed an encoding support problem when parsing from a memory block</li>
637 <li>fixed a DOCTYPE parsing problem</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]638 <li>removed a bug in the function allowing to override the memory
639 allocation routines</li>
Daniel Veillarda2679fa2000-07-22 02:38:15 +0000[diff] [blame]640</ul>
641
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]642<h3>2.2.0: July 14 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard94e90602000-07-17 14:38:19 +0000[diff] [blame]643<ul>
644 <li>applied a lot of portability fixes</li>
645 <li>better encoding support/cleanup and saving (content is now always
646 encoded in UTF-8)</li>
647 <li>the HTML parser now correctly handles encodings</li>
648 <li>added xmlHasProp()</li>
649 <li>fixed a serious problem with &amp;#38;</li>
650 <li>propagated the fix to FTP client</li>
651 <li>cleanup, bugfixes, etc ...</li>
652 <li>Added a page about <a href="encoding.html">libxml Internationalization
653 support</a></li>
654</ul>
655
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]656<h3>1.8.9: July 9 2000</h3>
657<ul>
658 <li>fixed the spec the RPMs should be better</li>
659 <li>fixed a serious bug in the FTP implementation, released 1.8.9 to solve
660 rpmfind users problem</li>
661</ul>
662
Daniel Veillard6388e172000-07-03 16:07:19 +0000[diff] [blame]663<h3>2.1.1: July 1 2000</h3>
664<ul>
665 <li>fixes a couple of bugs in the 2.1.0 packaging</li>
666 <li>improvements on the HTML parser</li>
667</ul>
668
Daniel Veillard3f6f7f62000-06-30 17:58:25 +0000[diff] [blame]669<h3>2.1.0 and 1.8.8: June 29 2000</h3>
670<ul>
671 <li>1.8.8 is mostly a comodity package for upgrading to libxml2 accoding to
672 <a href="upgrade.html">new instructions</a>. It fixes a nasty problem
673 about &amp;#38; charref parsing</li>
674 <li>2.1.0 also ease the upgrade from libxml v1 to the recent version. it
675 also contains numerous fixes and enhancements:
676 <ul>
677 <li>added xmlStopParser() to stop parsing</li>
678 <li>improved a lot parsing speed when there is large CDATA blocs</li>
679 <li>includes XPath patches provided by Picdar Technology</li>
680 <li>tried to fix as much as possible DtD validation and namespace
681 related problems</li>
682 <li>output to a given encoding has been added/tested</li>
683 <li>lot of various fixes</li>
684 </ul>
685 </li>
686</ul>
687
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]688<h3>2.0.0: Apr 12 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]689<ul>
690 <li>First public release of libxml2. If you are using libxml, it's a good
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]691 idea to check the 1.x to 2.x upgrade instructions. NOTE: while initally
692 scheduled for Apr 3 the relase occured only on Apr 12 due to massive
693 workload.</li>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]694 <li>The include are now located under $prefix/include/libxml (instead of
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]695 $prefix/include/gnome-xml), they also are referenced by
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]696 <pre>#include &lt;libxml/xxx.h&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]697 <p>instead of</p>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]698 <pre>#include "xxx.h"</pre>
699 </li>
Daniel Veillard8f621982000-03-20 13:07:15 +0000[diff] [blame]700 <li>a new URI module for parsing URIs and following strictly RFC 2396</li>
701 <li>the memory allocation routines used by libxml can now be overloaded
702 dynamically by using xmlMemSetup()</li>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]703 <li>The previously CVS only tool tester has been renamed
704 <strong>xmllint</strong> and is now installed as part of the libxml2
705 package</li>
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]706 <li>The I/O interface has been revamped. There is now ways to plug in
707 specific I/O modules, either at the URI scheme detection level using
708 xmlRegisterInputCallbacks() or by passing I/O functions when creating a
709 parser context using xmlCreateIOParserCtxt()</li>
710 <li>there is a C preprocessor macro LIBXML_VERSION providing the version
711 number of the libxml module in use</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]712 <li>a number of optional features of libxml can now be excluded at
713 configure time (FTP/HTTP/HTML/XPath/Debug)</li>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]714</ul>
715
716<h3>2.0.0beta: Mar 14 2000</h3>
717<ul>
718 <li>This is a first Beta release of libxml version 2</li>
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame]719 <li>It's available only from<a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">xmlsoft.org
720 FTP</a>, it's packaged as libxml2-2.0.0beta and available as tar and
721 RPMs</li>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]722 <li>This version is now the head in the Gnome CVS base, the old one is
723 available under the tag LIB_XML_1_X</li>
724 <li>This includes a very large set of changes. Froma programmatic point of
725 view applications should not have to be modified too much, check the <a
726 href="upgrade.html">upgrade page</a></li>
727 <li>Some interfaces may changes (especially a bit about encoding).</li>
728 <li>the updates includes:
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]729 <ul>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]730 <li>fix I18N support. ISO-Latin-x/UTF-8/UTF-16 (nearly) seems correctly
731 handled now</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]732 <li>Better handling of entities, especially well formedness checking
733 and proper PEref extensions in external subsets</li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]734 <li>DTD conditional sections</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]735 <li>Validation now correcly handle entities content</li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]736 <li><a href="http://rpmfind.net/tools/gdome/messages/0039.html">change
737 structures to accomodate DOM</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]738 </ul>
739 </li>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]740 <li>Serious progress were made toward compliance, <a
741 href="conf/result.html">here are the result of the test</a> against the
742 OASIS testsuite (except the japanese tests since I don't support that
743 encoding yet). This URL is rebuilt every couple of hours using the CVS
744 head version.</li>
Daniel Veillarde41f2b72000-01-30 20:00:07 +0000[diff] [blame]745</ul>
746
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]747<h3>1.8.7: Mar 6 2000</h3>
748<ul>
749 <li>This is a bug fix release:</li>
750 <li>It is possible to disable the ignorable blanks heuristic used by
751 libxml-1.x, a new function xmlKeepBlanksDefault(0) will allow this. Note
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]752 that for adherence to XML spec, this behaviour will be disabled by
753 default in 2.x . The same function will allow to keep compatibility for
754 old code.</li>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]755 <li>Blanks in &lt;a&gt; &lt;/a&gt; constructs are not ignored anymore,
756 avoiding heuristic is really the Right Way :-\</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]757 <li>The unchecked use of snprintf which was breaking libxml-1.8.6
758 compilation on some platforms has been fixed</li>
759 <li>nanoftp.c nanohttp.c: Fixed '#' and '?' stripping when processing
760 URIs</li>
761</ul>
762
Daniel Veillarde41f2b72000-01-30 20:00:07 +0000[diff] [blame]763<h3>1.8.6: Jan 31 2000</h3>
764<ul>
765 <li>added a nanoFTP transport module, debugged until the new version of <a
766 href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/rpmfind.html">rpmfind</a> can use
767 it without troubles</li>
Daniel Veillardda07c342000-01-25 18:31:22 +0000[diff] [blame]768</ul>
769
770<h3>1.8.5: Jan 21 2000</h3>
771<ul>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]772 <li>adding APIs to parse a well balanced chunk of XML (production <a
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]773 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#NT-content">[43] content</a> of the
774 XML spec)</li>
Daniel Veillard461a66c2000-01-18 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]775 <li>fixed a hideous bug in xmlGetProp pointed by Rune.Djurhuus@fast.no</li>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]776 <li>Jody Goldberg &lt;jgoldberg@home.com&gt; provided another patch trying
777 to solve the zlib checks problems</li>
Daniel Veillard461a66c2000-01-18 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]778 <li>The current state in gnome CVS base is expected to ship as 1.8.5 with
779 gnumeric soon</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]780</ul>
781
782<h3>1.8.4: Jan 13 2000</h3>
783<ul>
784 <li>bug fixes, reintroduced xmlNewGlobalNs(), fixed xmlNewNs()</li>
785 <li>all exit() call should have been removed from libxml</li>
786 <li>fixed a problem with INCLUDE_WINSOCK on WIN32 platform</li>
787 <li>added newDocFragment()</li>
Daniel Veillardf84f71f2000-01-05 19:54:23 +0000[diff] [blame]788</ul>
789
790<h3>1.8.3: Jan 5 2000</h3>
791<ul>
792 <li>a Push interface for the XML and HTML parsers</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]793 <li>a shell-like interface to the document tree (try tester --shell :-)</li>
Daniel Veillarddbfd6411999-12-28 16:35:14 +0000[diff] [blame]794 <li>lots of bug fixes and improvement added over XMas hollidays</li>
Daniel Veillard437b87b2000-01-03 17:30:46 +0000[diff] [blame]795 <li>fixed the DTD parsing code to work with the xhtml DTD</li>
Daniel Veillardf84f71f2000-01-05 19:54:23 +0000[diff] [blame]796 <li>added xmlRemoveProp(), xmlRemoveID() and xmlRemoveRef()</li>
797 <li>Fixed bugs in xmlNewNs()</li>
Daniel Veillard437b87b2000-01-03 17:30:46 +0000[diff] [blame]798 <li>External entity loading code has been revamped, now it uses
Daniel Veillardf84f71f2000-01-05 19:54:23 +0000[diff] [blame]799 xmlLoadExternalEntity(), some fix on entities processing were added</li>
Daniel Veillard437b87b2000-01-03 17:30:46 +0000[diff] [blame]800 <li>cleaned up WIN32 includes of socket stuff</li>
Daniel Veillard5cb5ab81999-12-21 15:35:29 +0000[diff] [blame]801</ul>
802
803<h3>1.8.2: Dec 21 1999</h3>
804<ul>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]805 <li>I got another problem with includes and C++, I hope this issue is fixed
806 for good this time</li>
Daniel Veillard5cb5ab81999-12-21 15:35:29 +0000[diff] [blame]807 <li>Added a few tree modification functions: xmlReplaceNode,
808 xmlAddPrevSibling, xmlAddNextSibling, xmlNodeSetName and
809 xmlDocSetRootElement</li>
810 <li>Tried to improve the HTML output with help from <a
811 href="mailto:clahey@umich.edu">Chris Lahey</a></li>
Daniel Veillarde4e51311999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]812</ul>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]813
Daniel Veillarde4e51311999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]814<h3>1.8.1: Dec 18 1999</h3>
815<ul>
816 <li>various patches to avoid troubles when using libxml with C++ compilers
817 the "namespace" keyword and C escaping in include files</li>
818 <li>a problem in one of the core macros IS_CHAR was corrected</li>
819 <li>fixed a bug introduced in 1.8.0 breaking default namespace processing,
820 and more specifically the Dia application</li>
Daniel Veillard944b5ff1999-12-15 19:08:24 +0000[diff] [blame]821 <li>fixed a posteriori validation (validation after parsing, or by using a
822 Dtd not specified in the original document)</li>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]823 <li>fixed a bug in</li>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]824</ul>
825
826<h3>1.8.0: Dec 12 1999</h3>
827<ul>
828 <li>cleanup, especially memory wise</li>
829 <li>the parser should be more reliable, especially the HTML one, it should
830 not crash, whatever the input !</li>
831 <li>Integrated various patches, especially a speedup improvement for large
832 dataset from <a href="mailto:cnygard@bellatlantic.net">Carl Nygard</a>,
833 configure with --with-buffers to enable them.</li>
834 <li>attribute normalization, oops should have been added long ago !</li>
835 <li>attributes defaulted from Dtds should be available, xmlSetProp() now
836 does entities escapting by default.</li>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]837</ul>
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]838
839<h3>1.7.4: Oct 25 1999</h3>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]840<ul>
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]841 <li>Lots of HTML improvement</li>
842 <li>Fixed some errors when saving both XML and HTML</li>
843 <li>More examples, the regression tests should now look clean</li>
844 <li>Fixed a bug with contiguous charref</li>
845</ul>
846
847<h3>1.7.3: Sep 29 1999</h3>
848<ul>
849 <li>portability problems fixed</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]850 <li>snprintf was used unconditionnally, leading to link problems on system
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]851 were it's not available, fixed</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]852</ul>
853
854<h3>1.7.1: Sep 24 1999</h3>
855<ul>
856 <li>The basic type for strings manipulated by libxml has been renamed in
857 1.7.1 from <strong>CHAR</strong> to <strong>xmlChar</strong>. The reason
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]858 is that CHAR was conflicting with a predefined type on Windows. However
859 on non WIN32 environment, compatibility is provided by the way of a
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]860 <strong>#define </strong>.</li>
861 <li>Changed another error : the use of a structure field called errno, and
862 leading to troubles on platforms where it's a macro</li>
863</ul>
864
865<h3>1.7.0: sep 23 1999</h3>
866<ul>
867 <li>Added the ability to fetch remote DTD or parsed entities, see the <a
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]868 href="html/libxml-nanohttp.html">nanohttp</a> module.</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]869 <li>Added an errno to report errors by another mean than a simple printf
870 like callback</li>
871 <li>Finished ID/IDREF support and checking when validation</li>
872 <li>Serious memory leaks fixed (there is now a <a
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]873 href="html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">memory wrapper</a> module)</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]874 <li>Improvement of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath">XPath</a>
875 implementation</li>
876 <li>Added an HTML parser front-end</li>
877</ul>
878
879<h2><a name="XML">XML</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]880
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]881<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml">XML is a standard</a> for
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]882markup-based structured documents. Here is <a name="example">an example XML
883document</a>:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]884<pre>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
885&lt;EXAMPLE prop1="gnome is great" prop2="&amp;amp; linux too"&gt;
886 &lt;head&gt;
887 &lt;title&gt;Welcome to Gnome&lt;/title&gt;
888 &lt;/head&gt;
889 &lt;chapter&gt;
890 &lt;title&gt;The Linux adventure&lt;/title&gt;
891 &lt;p&gt;bla bla bla ...&lt;/p&gt;
892 &lt;image href="linus.gif"/&gt;
893 &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;
894 &lt;/chapter&gt;
895&lt;/EXAMPLE&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]896
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]897<p>The first line specifies that it's an XML document and gives useful
898information about its encoding. Then the document is a text format whose
899structure is specified by tags between brackets. <strong>Each tag opened has
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]900to be closed</strong>. XML is pedantic about this. However, if a tag is empty
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]901(no content), a single tag can serve as both the opening and closing tag if
902it ends with <code>/&gt;</code> rather than with <code>&gt;</code>. Note
903that, for example, the image tag has no content (just an attribute) and is
904closed by ending the tag with <code>/&gt;</code>.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]905
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]906<p>XML can be applied sucessfully to a wide range of uses, from long term
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]907structured document maintenance (where it follows the steps of SGML) to
908simple data encoding mechanisms like configuration file formatting (glade),
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]909spreadsheets (gnumeric), or even shorter lived documents such as WebDAV where
910it is used to encode remote calls between a client and a server.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]911
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]912<h2><a name="XSLT">XSLT</a></h2>
913
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]914<p>Check <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT">the separate libxslt page</a></p>
915
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]916<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt">XSL Transformations</a>, is a
917language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents (or
918HTML/textual output).</p>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]919
920<p>A separate library called libxslt is being built on top of libxml2. This
921module "libxslt" can be found in the Gnome CVS base too.</p>
922
Daniel Veillard383b1472001-01-23 11:39:52 +0000[diff] [blame]923<p>You can check the <a
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]924href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/libxslt/FEATURES">features</a>
925supported and the progresses on the <a
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]926href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/libxslt/ChangeLog">Changelog</a></p>
927
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]928<h2>An overview of libxml architecture</h2>
929
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]930<p>Libxml is made of multiple components; some of them are optional, and most
931of the block interfaces are public. The main components are:</p>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]932<ul>
933 <li>an Input/Output layer</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]934 <li>FTP and HTTP client layers (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]935 <li>an Internationalization layer managing the encodings support</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]936 <li>a URI module</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]937 <li>the XML parser and its basic SAX interface</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]938 <li>an HTML parser using the same SAX interface (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]939 <li>a SAX tree module to build an in-memory DOM representation</li>
940 <li>a tree module to manipulate the DOM representation</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]941 <li>a validation module using the DOM representation (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]942 <li>an XPath module for global lookup in a DOM representation
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]943 (optional)</li>
944 <li>a debug module (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]945</ul>
946
947<p>Graphically this gives the following:</p>
948
949<p><img src="libxml.gif" alt="a graphical view of the various"></p>
950
951<p></p>
952
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]953<h2><a name="tree">The tree output</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]954
955<p>The parser returns a tree built during the document analysis. The value
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]956returned is an <strong>xmlDocPtr</strong> (i.e., a pointer to an
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]957<strong>xmlDoc</strong> structure). This structure contains information such
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]958as the file name, the document type, and a <strong>children</strong> pointer
959which is the root of the document (or more exactly the first child under the
960root which is the document). The tree is made of <strong>xmlNode</strong>s,
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]961chained in double-linked lists of siblings and with a children&lt;-&gt;parent
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]962relationship. An xmlNode can also carry properties (a chain of xmlAttr
963structures). An attribute may have a value which is a list of TEXT or
964ENTITY_REF nodes.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]965
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]966<p>Here is an example (erroneous with respect to the XML spec since there
967should be only one ELEMENT under the root):</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]968
969<p><img src="structure.gif" alt=" structure.gif "></p>
970
971<p>In the source package there is a small program (not installed by default)
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]972called <strong>xmllint</strong> which parses XML files given as argument and
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]973prints them back as parsed. This is useful for detecting errors both in XML
974code and in the XML parser itself. It has an option <strong>--debug</strong>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]975which prints the actual in-memory structure of the document; here is the
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]976result with the <a href="#example">example</a> given before:</p>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]977<pre>DOCUMENT
978version=1.0
979standalone=true
980 ELEMENT EXAMPLE
981 ATTRIBUTE prop1
982 TEXT
983 content=gnome is great
984 ATTRIBUTE prop2
985 ENTITY_REF
986 TEXT
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]987 content= linux too
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]988 ELEMENT head
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]989 ELEMENT title
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]990 TEXT
991 content=Welcome to Gnome
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]992 ELEMENT chapter
993 ELEMENT title
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]994 TEXT
995 content=The Linux adventure
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]996 ELEMENT p
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]997 TEXT
998 content=bla bla bla ...
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]999 ELEMENT image
1000 ATTRIBUTE href
1001 TEXT
1002 content=linus.gif
1003 ELEMENT p
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1004 TEXT
1005 content=...</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1006
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1007<p>This should be useful for learning the internal representation model.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1008
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1009<h2><a name="interface">The SAX interface</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1010
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]1011<p>Sometimes the DOM tree output is just too large to fit reasonably into
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1012memory. In that case (and if you don't expect to save back the XML document
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1013loaded using libxml), it's better to use the SAX interface of libxml. SAX is
1014a <strong>callback-based interface</strong> to the parser. Before parsing,
1015the application layer registers a customized set of callbacks which are
1016called by the library as it progresses through the XML input.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1017
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1018<p>To get more detailed step-by-step guidance on using the SAX interface of
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1019libxml, see the <a
1020href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">nice
1021documentation</a>.written by <a href="mailto:james@daa.com.au">James
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1022Henstridge</a>.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1023
1024<p>You can debug the SAX behaviour by using the <strong>testSAX</strong>
1025program located in the gnome-xml module (it's usually not shipped in the
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1026binary packages of libxml, but you can find it in the tar source
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]1027distribution). Here is the sequence of callbacks that would be reported by
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1028testSAX when parsing the example XML document shown earlier:</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1029<pre>SAX.setDocumentLocator()
1030SAX.startDocument()
1031SAX.getEntity(amp)
1032SAX.startElement(EXAMPLE, prop1='gnome is great', prop2='&amp;amp; linux too')
1033SAX.characters( , 3)
1034SAX.startElement(head)
1035SAX.characters( , 4)
1036SAX.startElement(title)
1037SAX.characters(Welcome to Gnome, 16)
1038SAX.endElement(title)
1039SAX.characters( , 3)
1040SAX.endElement(head)
1041SAX.characters( , 3)
1042SAX.startElement(chapter)
1043SAX.characters( , 4)
1044SAX.startElement(title)
1045SAX.characters(The Linux adventure, 19)
1046SAX.endElement(title)
1047SAX.characters( , 4)
1048SAX.startElement(p)
1049SAX.characters(bla bla bla ..., 15)
1050SAX.endElement(p)
1051SAX.characters( , 4)
1052SAX.startElement(image, href='linus.gif')
1053SAX.endElement(image)
1054SAX.characters( , 4)
1055SAX.startElement(p)
1056SAX.characters(..., 3)
1057SAX.endElement(p)
1058SAX.characters( , 3)
1059SAX.endElement(chapter)
1060SAX.characters( , 1)
1061SAX.endElement(EXAMPLE)
1062SAX.endDocument()</pre>
1063
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1064<p>Most of the other interfaces of libxml are based on the DOM tree-building
1065facility, so nearly everything up to the end of this document presupposes the
1066use of the standard DOM tree build. Note that the DOM tree itself is built by
1067a set of registered default callbacks, without internal specific
1068interface.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1069
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1070<h2><a name="library">The XML library interfaces</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1071
1072<p>This section is directly intended to help programmers getting bootstrapped
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1073using the XML library from the C language. It is not intended to be
1074extensive. I hope the automatically generated documents will provide the
1075completeness required, but as a separate set of documents. The interfaces of
1076the XML library are by principle low level, there is nearly zero abstraction.
1077Those interested in a higher level API should <a href="#DOM">look at
1078DOM</a>.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1079
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1080<p>The <a href="html/libxml-parser.html">parser interfaces for XML</a> are
1081separated from the <a href="html/libxml-htmlparser.html">HTML parser
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1082interfaces</a>. Let's have a look at how the XML parser can be called:</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1083
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1084<h3><a name="Invoking">Invoking the parser : the pull method</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1085
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1086<p>Usually, the first thing to do is to read an XML input. The parser accepts
1087documents either from in-memory strings or from files. The functions are
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1088defined in "parser.h":</p>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1089<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1090 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseMemory(char *buffer, int size);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1091 <dd><p>Parse a null-terminated string containing the document.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1092 </dd>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1093</dl>
1094<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1095 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseFile(const char *filename);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1096 <dd><p>Parse an XML document contained in a (possibly compressed)
1097 file.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1098 </dd>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1099</dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1100
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1101<p>The parser returns a pointer to the document structure (or NULL in case of
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1102failure).</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1103
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1104<h3 id="Invoking1">Invoking the parser: the push method</h3>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1105
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1106<p>In order for the application to keep the control when the document is
1107being fetched (which is common for GUI based programs) libxml provides a push
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1108interface, too, as of version 1.8.3. Here are the interface functions:</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1109<pre>xmlParserCtxtPtr xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(xmlSAXHandlerPtr sax,
1110 void *user_data,
1111 const char *chunk,
1112 int size,
1113 const char *filename);
1114int xmlParseChunk (xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt,
1115 const char *chunk,
1116 int size,
1117 int terminate);</pre>
1118
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1119<p>and here is a simple example showing how to use the interface:</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1120<pre> FILE *f;
1121
1122 f = fopen(filename, "r");
1123 if (f != NULL) {
1124 int res, size = 1024;
1125 char chars[1024];
1126 xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt;
1127
1128 res = fread(chars, 1, 4, f);
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1129 if (res &gt; 0) {
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1130 ctxt = xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(NULL, NULL,
1131 chars, res, filename);
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1132 while ((res = fread(chars, 1, size, f)) &gt; 0) {
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1133 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, res, 0);
1134 }
1135 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, 0, 1);
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1136 doc = ctxt-&gt;myDoc;
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1137 xmlFreeParserCtxt(ctxt);
1138 }
1139 }</pre>
1140
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1141<p>The HTML parser embedded into libxml also has a push interface; the
1142functions are just prefixed by "html" rather than "xml".</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1143
1144<h3 id="Invoking2">Invoking the parser: the SAX interface</h3>
1145
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1146<p>The tree-building interface makes the parser memory-hungry, first loading
1147the document in memory and then building the tree itself. Reading a document
1148without building the tree is possible using the SAX interfaces (see SAX.h and
1149<a href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">James
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1150Henstridge's documentation</a>). Note also that the push interface can be
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1151limited to SAX: just use the two first arguments of
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1152<code>xmlCreatePushParserCtxt()</code>.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1153
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1154<h3><a name="Building">Building a tree from scratch</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1155
1156<p>The other way to get an XML tree in memory is by building it. Basically
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1157there is a set of functions dedicated to building new elements. (These are
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1158also described in &lt;libxml/tree.h&gt;.) For example, here is a piece of
1159code that produces the XML document used in the previous examples:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1160<pre> #include &lt;libxml/tree.h&gt;
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1161 xmlDocPtr doc;
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1162 xmlNodePtr tree, subtree;
1163
1164 doc = xmlNewDoc("1.0");
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1165 doc-&gt;children = xmlNewDocNode(doc, NULL, "EXAMPLE", NULL);
1166 xmlSetProp(doc-&gt;children, "prop1", "gnome is great");
1167 xmlSetProp(doc-&gt;children, "prop2", "&amp; linux too");
1168 tree = xmlNewChild(doc-&gt;children, NULL, "head", NULL);
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1169 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "Welcome to Gnome");
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1170 tree = xmlNewChild(doc-&gt;children, NULL, "chapter", NULL);
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1171 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "The Linux adventure");
1172 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "p", "bla bla bla ...");
1173 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "image", NULL);
1174 xmlSetProp(subtree, "href", "linus.gif");</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1175
1176<p>Not really rocket science ...</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1177
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1178<h3><a name="Traversing">Traversing the tree</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1179
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1180<p>Basically by <a href="html/libxml-tree.html">including "tree.h"</a> your
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1181code has access to the internal structure of all the elements of the tree.
1182The names should be somewhat simple like <strong>parent</strong>,
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1183<strong>children</strong>, <strong>next</strong>, <strong>prev</strong>,
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1184<strong>properties</strong>, etc... For example, still with the previous
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1185example:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1186<pre><code>doc-&gt;children-&gt;children-&gt;children</code></pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1187
1188<p>points to the title element,</p>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1189<pre>doc-&gt;children-&gt;children-&gt;next-&gt;children-&gt;children</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1190
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1191<p>points to the text node containing the chapter title "The Linux
1192adventure".</p>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1193
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]1194<p><strong>NOTE</strong>: XML allows <em>PI</em>s and <em>comments</em> to be
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1195present before the document root, so <code>doc-&gt;children</code> may point
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1196to an element which is not the document Root Element; a function
Daniel Veillard5cb5ab81999-12-21 15:35:29 +0000[diff] [blame]1197<code>xmlDocGetRootElement()</code> was added for this purpose.</p>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]1198
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1199<h3><a name="Modifying">Modifying the tree</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1200
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1201<p>Functions are provided for reading and writing the document content. Here
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1202is an excerpt from the <a href="html/libxml-tree.html">tree API</a>:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1203<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1204 <dt><code>xmlAttrPtr xmlSetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar *name, const
1205 xmlChar *value);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1206 <dd><p>This sets (or changes) an attribute carried by an ELEMENT node.
1207 The value can be NULL.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1208 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1209</dl>
1210<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1211 <dt><code>const xmlChar *xmlGetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1212 *name);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardc92c3042000-09-29 02:42:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1213 <dd><p>This function returns a pointer to new copy of the property
1214 content. Note that the user must deallocate the result.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1215 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1216</dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1217
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1218<p>Two functions are provided for reading and writing the text associated
1219with elements:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1220<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1221 <dt><code>xmlNodePtr xmlStringGetNodeList(xmlDocPtr doc, const xmlChar
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1222 *value);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1223 <dd><p>This function takes an "external" string and converts it to one
1224 text node or possibly to a list of entity and text nodes. All
1225 non-predefined entity references like &amp;Gnome; will be stored
1226 internally as entity nodes, hence the result of the function may not be
1227 a single node.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1228 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1229</dl>
1230<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1231 <dt><code>xmlChar *xmlNodeListGetString(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNodePtr list, int
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1232 inLine);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1233 <dd><p>This function is the inverse of
1234 <code>xmlStringGetNodeList()</code>. It generates a new string
1235 containing the content of the text and entity nodes. Note the extra
1236 argument inLine. If this argument is set to 1, the function will expand
1237 entity references. For example, instead of returning the &amp;Gnome;
1238 XML encoding in the string, it will substitute it with its value (say,
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1239 "GNU Network Object Model Environment").</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1240 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1241</dl>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1242
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1243<h3><a name="Saving">Saving a tree</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1244
1245<p>Basically 3 options are possible:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1246<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1247 <dt><code>void xmlDocDumpMemory(xmlDocPtr cur, xmlChar**mem, int
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1248 *size);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1249 <dd><p>Returns a buffer into which the document has been saved.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1250 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1251</dl>
1252<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1253 <dt><code>extern void xmlDocDump(FILE *f, xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1254 <dd><p>Dumps a document to an open file descriptor.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1255 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1256</dl>
1257<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1258 <dt><code>int xmlSaveFile(const char *filename, xmlDocPtr cur);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1259 <dd><p>Saves the document to a file. In this case, the compression
1260 interface is triggered if it has been turned on.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1261 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1262</dl>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1263
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1264<h3><a name="Compressio">Compression</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1265
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1266<p>The library transparently handles compression when doing file-based
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1267accesses. The level of compression on saves can be turned on either globally
1268or individually for one file:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1269<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1270 <dt><code>int xmlGetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1271 <dd><p>Gets the document compression ratio (0-9).</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1272 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1273</dl>
1274<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1275 <dt><code>void xmlSetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc, int mode);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1276 <dd><p>Sets the document compression ratio.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1277 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1278</dl>
1279<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1280 <dt><code>int xmlGetCompressMode(void);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1281 <dd><p>Gets the default compression ratio.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1282 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1283</dl>
1284<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1285 <dt><code>void xmlSetCompressMode(int mode);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1286 <dd><p>Sets the default compression ratio.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1287 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1288</dl>
1289
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1290<h2><a name="Entities">Entities or no entities</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1291
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1292<p>Entities in principle are similar to simple C macros. An entity defines an
1293abbreviation for a given string that you can reuse many times throughout the
1294content of your document. Entities are especially useful when a given string
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1295may occur frequently within a document, or to confine the change needed to a
1296document to a restricted area in the internal subset of the document (at the
1297beginning). Example:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1298<pre>1 &lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]12992 &lt;!DOCTYPE EXAMPLE SYSTEM "example.dtd" [
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]13003 &lt;!ENTITY xml "Extensible Markup Language"&gt;
13014 ]&gt;
13025 &lt;EXAMPLE&gt;
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]13036 &amp;xml;
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]13047 &lt;/EXAMPLE&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1305
1306<p>Line 3 declares the xml entity. Line 6 uses the xml entity, by prefixing
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1307its name with '&amp;' and following it by ';' without any spaces added. There
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1308are 5 predefined entities in libxml allowing you to escape charaters with
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1309predefined meaning in some parts of the xml document content:
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1310<strong>&amp;lt;</strong> for the character '&lt;', <strong>&amp;gt;</strong>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1311for the character '&gt;', <strong>&amp;apos;</strong> for the character ''',
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1312<strong>&amp;quot;</strong> for the character '"', and
1313<strong>&amp;amp;</strong> for the character '&amp;'.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1314
1315<p>One of the problems related to entities is that you may want the parser to
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1316substitute an entity's content so that you can see the replacement text in
1317your application. Or you may prefer to keep entity references as such in the
1318content to be able to save the document back without losing this usually
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1319precious information (if the user went through the pain of explicitly
1320defining entities, he may have a a rather negative attitude if you blindly
1321susbtitute them as saving time). The <a
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1322href="html/libxml-parser.html#XMLSUBSTITUTEENTITIESDEFAULT">xmlSubstituteEntitiesDefault()</a>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1323function allows you to check and change the behaviour, which is to not
1324substitute entities by default.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1325
1326<p>Here is the DOM tree built by libxml for the previous document in the
1327default case:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1328<pre>/gnome/src/gnome-xml -&gt; ./xmllint --debug test/ent1
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1329DOCUMENT
1330version=1.0
1331 ELEMENT EXAMPLE
1332 TEXT
1333 content=
1334 ENTITY_REF
1335 INTERNAL_GENERAL_ENTITY xml
1336 content=Extensible Markup Language
1337 TEXT
1338 content=</pre>
1339
1340<p>And here is the result when substituting entities:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1341<pre>/gnome/src/gnome-xml -&gt; ./tester --debug --noent test/ent1
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1342DOCUMENT
1343version=1.0
1344 ELEMENT EXAMPLE
1345 TEXT
1346 content= Extensible Markup Language</pre>
1347
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1348<p>So, entities or no entities? Basically, it depends on your use case. I
1349suggest that you keep the non-substituting default behaviour and avoid using
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1350entities in your XML document or data if you are not willing to handle the
1351entity references elements in the DOM tree.</p>
1352
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1353<p>Note that at save time libxml enforces the conversion of the predefined
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1354entities where necessary to prevent well-formedness problems, and will also
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1355transparently replace those with chars (i.e. it will not generate entity
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1356reference elements in the DOM tree or call the reference() SAX callback when
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1357finding them in the input).</p>
1358
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1359<p><span style="background-color: #FF0000">WARNING</span>: handling entities
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1360on top of the libxml SAX interface is difficult!!! If you plan to use
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1361non-predefined entities in your documents, then the learning cuvre to handle
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1362then using the SAX API may be long. If you plan to use complex documents, I
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1363strongly suggest you consider using the DOM interface instead and let libxml
Daniel Veillard8c6d6af2000-08-25 17:14:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1364deal with the complexity rather than trying to do it yourself.</p>
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1365
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1366<h2><a name="Namespaces">Namespaces</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1367
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1368<p>The libxml library implements <a
1369href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/">XML namespaces</a> support by
1370recognizing namespace contructs in the input, and does namespace lookup
1371automatically when building the DOM tree. A namespace declaration is
1372associated with an in-memory structure and all elements or attributes within
1373that namespace point to it. Hence testing the namespace is a simple and fast
1374equality operation at the user level.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1375
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1376<p>I suggest that people using libxml use a namespace, and declare it in the
1377root element of their document as the default namespace. Then they don't need
1378to use the prefix in the content but we will have a basis for future semantic
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1379refinement and merging of data from different sources. This doesn't increase
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1380the size of the XML output significantly, but significantly increases its
1381value in the long-term. Example:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1382<pre>&lt;mydoc xmlns="http://mydoc.example.org/schemas/"&gt;
1383 &lt;elem1&gt;...&lt;/elem1&gt;
1384 &lt;elem2&gt;...&lt;/elem2&gt;
1385&lt;/mydoc&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1386
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1387<p>The namespace value has to be an absolute URL, but the URL doesn't have to
1388point to any existing resource on the Web. It will bind all the element and
1389atributes with that URL. I suggest to use an URL within a domain you control,
1390and that the URL should contain some kind of version information if possible.
1391For example, <code>"http://www.gnome.org/gnumeric/1.0/"</code> is a good
1392namespace scheme.</p>
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1393
1394<p>Then when you load a file, make sure that a namespace carrying the
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1395version-independent prefix is installed on the root element of your document,
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1396and if the version information don't match something you know, warn the user
1397and be liberal in what you accept as the input. Also do *not* try to base
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1398namespace checking on the prefix value. &lt;foo:text&gt; may be exactly the
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1399same as &lt;bar:text&gt; in another document. What really matters is the URI
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1400associated with the element or the attribute, not the prefix string (which is
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1401just a shortcut for the full URI). In libxml, element and attributes have an
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1402<code>ns</code> field pointing to an xmlNs structure detailing the namespace
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1403prefix and its URI.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1404
1405<p>@@Interfaces@@</p>
1406
1407<p>@@Examples@@</p>
1408
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1409<p>Usually people object to using namespaces together with validity checking.
1410I will try to make sure that using namespaces won't break validity checking,
1411so even if you plan to use or currently are using validation I strongly
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1412suggest adding namespaces to your document. A default namespace scheme
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1413<code>xmlns="http://...."</code> should not break validity even on less
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1414flexible parsers. Using namespaces to mix and differentiate content coming
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1415from multiple DTDs will certainly break current validation schemes. I will
1416try to provide ways to do this, but this may not be portable or
1417standardized.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1418
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1419<h2><a name="Validation">Validation, or are you afraid of DTDs ?</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1420
1421<p>Well what is validation and what is a DTD ?</p>
1422
1423<p>Validation is the process of checking a document against a set of
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1424construction rules; a <strong>DTD</strong> (Document Type Definition) is such
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1425a set of rules.</p>
1426
1427<p>The validation process and building DTDs are the two most difficult parts
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1428of the XML life cycle. Briefly a DTD defines all the possibles element to be
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1429found within your document, what is the formal shape of your document tree
1430(by defining the allowed content of an element, either text, a regular
1431expression for the allowed list of children, or mixed content i.e. both text
1432and children). The DTD also defines the allowed attributes for all elements
1433and the types of the attributes. For more detailed information, I suggest
1434that you read the related parts of the XML specification, the examples found
1435under gnome-xml/test/valid/dtd and any of the large number of books available
1436on XML. The dia example in gnome-xml/test/valid should be both simple and
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1437complete enough to allow you to build your own.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1438
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1439<p>A word of warning, building a good DTD which will fit the needs of your
1440application in the long-term is far from trivial; however, the extra level of
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1441quality it can ensure is well worth the price for some sets of applications
1442or if you already have already a DTD defined for your application field.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1443
1444<p>The validation is not completely finished but in a (very IMHO) usable
1445state. Until a real validation interface is defined the way to do it is to
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1446define and set the <strong>xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue</strong>
1447external variable to 1, this will of course be changed at some point:</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1448
1449<p>extern int xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue;</p>
1450
1451<p>...</p>
1452
1453<p>xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue = 1;</p>
1454
1455<p></p>
1456
1457<p>To handle external entities, use the function
1458<strong>xmlSetExternalEntityLoader</strong>(xmlExternalEntityLoader f); to
1459link in you HTTP/FTP/Entities database library to the standard libxml
1460core.</p>
1461
1462<p>@@interfaces@@</p>
1463
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]1464<h2><a name="DOM"></a><a name="Principles">DOM Principles</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1465
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1466<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/DOM/">DOM</a> stands for the <em>Document
1467Object Model</em>; this is an API for accessing XML or HTML structured
1468documents. Native support for DOM in Gnome is on the way (module gnome-dom),
1469and will be based on gnome-xml. This will be a far cleaner interface to
1470manipulate XML files within Gnome since it won't expose the internal
1471structure.</p>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1472
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1473<p>The current DOM implementation on top of libxml is the <a
Daniel Veillarda47fb3d2001-03-25 17:23:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1474href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gdome2/">gdome2 Gnome module</a>, this
1475is a full DOM interface, thanks to Paolo Casarini, check the <a
1476href="http://www.cs.unibo.it/~casarini/gdome2/">Gdome2 homepage</a> for more
1477informations.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1478
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]1479<h2><a name="Example"></a><a name="real">A real example</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1480
1481<p>Here is a real size example, where the actual content of the application
1482data is not kept in the DOM tree but uses internal structures. It is based on
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1483a proposal to keep a database of jobs related to Gnome, with an XML based
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1484storage structure. Here is an <a href="gjobs.xml">XML encoded jobs
1485base</a>:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1486<pre>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
1487&lt;gjob:Helping xmlns:gjob="http://www.gnome.org/some-location"&gt;
1488 &lt;gjob:Jobs&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1489
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1490 &lt;gjob:Job&gt;
1491 &lt;gjob:Project ID="3"/&gt;
1492 &lt;gjob:Application&gt;GBackup&lt;/gjob:Application&gt;
1493 &lt;gjob:Category&gt;Development&lt;/gjob:Category&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1494
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1495 &lt;gjob:Update&gt;
1496 &lt;gjob:Status&gt;Open&lt;/gjob:Status&gt;
1497 &lt;gjob:Modified&gt;Mon, 07 Jun 1999 20:27:45 -0400 MET DST&lt;/gjob:Modified&gt;
1498 &lt;gjob:Salary&gt;USD 0.00&lt;/gjob:Salary&gt;
1499 &lt;/gjob:Update&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1500
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1501 &lt;gjob:Developers&gt;
1502 &lt;gjob:Developer&gt;
1503 &lt;/gjob:Developer&gt;
1504 &lt;/gjob:Developers&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1505
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1506 &lt;gjob:Contact&gt;
1507 &lt;gjob:Person&gt;Nathan Clemons&lt;/gjob:Person&gt;
1508 &lt;gjob:Email&gt;nathan@windsofstorm.net&lt;/gjob:Email&gt;
1509 &lt;gjob:Company&gt;
1510 &lt;/gjob:Company&gt;
1511 &lt;gjob:Organisation&gt;
1512 &lt;/gjob:Organisation&gt;
1513 &lt;gjob:Webpage&gt;
1514 &lt;/gjob:Webpage&gt;
1515 &lt;gjob:Snailmail&gt;
1516 &lt;/gjob:Snailmail&gt;
1517 &lt;gjob:Phone&gt;
1518 &lt;/gjob:Phone&gt;
1519 &lt;/gjob:Contact&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1520
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1521 &lt;gjob:Requirements&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1522 The program should be released as free software, under the GPL.
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1523 &lt;/gjob:Requirements&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1524
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1525 &lt;gjob:Skills&gt;
1526 &lt;/gjob:Skills&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1527
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1528 &lt;gjob:Details&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1529 A GNOME based system that will allow a superuser to configure
1530 compressed and uncompressed files and/or file systems to be backed
1531 up with a supported media in the system. This should be able to
1532 perform via find commands generating a list of files that are passed
1533 to tar, dd, cpio, cp, gzip, etc., to be directed to the tape machine
1534 or via operations performed on the filesystem itself. Email
1535 notification and GUI status display very important.
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1536 &lt;/gjob:Details&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1537
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1538 &lt;/gjob:Job&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1539
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1540 &lt;/gjob:Jobs&gt;
1541&lt;/gjob:Helping&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1542
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1543<p>While loading the XML file into an internal DOM tree is a matter of
1544calling only a couple of functions, browsing the tree to gather the ata and
1545generate the internal structures is harder, and more error prone.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1546
1547<p>The suggested principle is to be tolerant with respect to the input
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1548structure. For example, the ordering of the attributes is not significant,
1549the XML specification is clear about it. It's also usually a good idea not to
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1550depend on the order of the children of a given node, unless it really makes
1551things harder. Here is some code to parse the information for a person:</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1552<pre>/*
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1553 * A person record
1554 */
1555typedef struct person {
1556 char *name;
1557 char *email;
1558 char *company;
1559 char *organisation;
1560 char *smail;
1561 char *webPage;
1562 char *phone;
1563} person, *personPtr;
1564
1565/*
1566 * And the code needed to parse it
1567 */
1568personPtr parsePerson(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) {
1569 personPtr ret = NULL;
1570
1571DEBUG("parsePerson\n");
1572 /*
1573 * allocate the struct
1574 */
1575 ret = (personPtr) malloc(sizeof(person));
1576 if (ret == NULL) {
1577 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n");
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1578 return(NULL);
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1579 }
1580 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(person));
1581
1582 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1583 cur = cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1584 while (cur != NULL) {
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1585 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Person")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1586 ret-&gt;name = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1587 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Email")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1588 ret-&gt;email = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1589 cur = cur-&gt;next;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1590 }
1591
1592 return(ret);
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1593}</pre>
1594
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1595<p>Here are a couple of things to notice:</p>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1596<ul>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1597 <li>Usually a recursive parsing style is the more convenient one: XML data
1598 is by nature subject to repetitive constructs and usually exibits highly
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1599 stuctured patterns.</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1600 <li>The two arguments of type <em>xmlDocPtr</em> and <em>xmlNsPtr</em>,
1601 i.e. the pointer to the global XML document and the namespace reserved to
1602 the application. Document wide information are needed for example to
1603 decode entities and it's a good coding practice to define a namespace for
1604 your application set of data and test that the element and attributes
1605 you're analyzing actually pertains to your application space. This is
1606 done by a simple equality test (cur-&gt;ns == ns).</li>
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1607 <li>To retrieve text and attributes value, you can use the function
1608 <em>xmlNodeListGetString</em> to gather all the text and entity reference
1609 nodes generated by the DOM output and produce an single text string.</li>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1610</ul>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1611
1612<p>Here is another piece of code used to parse another level of the
1613structure:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1614<pre>#include &lt;libxml/tree.h&gt;
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1615/*
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1616 * a Description for a Job
1617 */
1618typedef struct job {
1619 char *projectID;
1620 char *application;
1621 char *category;
1622 personPtr contact;
1623 int nbDevelopers;
1624 personPtr developers[100]; /* using dynamic alloc is left as an exercise */
1625} job, *jobPtr;
1626
1627/*
1628 * And the code needed to parse it
1629 */
1630jobPtr parseJob(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) {
1631 jobPtr ret = NULL;
1632
1633DEBUG("parseJob\n");
1634 /*
1635 * allocate the struct
1636 */
1637 ret = (jobPtr) malloc(sizeof(job));
1638 if (ret == NULL) {
1639 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n");
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1640 return(NULL);
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1641 }
1642 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(job));
1643
1644 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1645 cur = cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1646 while (cur != NULL) {
1647
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1648 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Project")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns)) {
1649 ret-&gt;projectID = xmlGetProp(cur, "ID");
1650 if (ret-&gt;projectID == NULL) {
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1651 fprintf(stderr, "Project has no ID\n");
1652 }
1653 }
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1654 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Application")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1655 ret-&gt;application = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1656 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Category")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1657 ret-&gt;category = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1658 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Contact")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1659 ret-&gt;contact = parsePerson(doc, ns, cur);
1660 cur = cur-&gt;next;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1661 }
1662
1663 return(ret);
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1664}</pre>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1665
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1666<p>Once you are used to it, writing this kind of code is quite simple, but
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1667boring. Ultimately, it could be possble to write stubbers taking either C
1668data structure definitions, a set of XML examples or an XML DTD and produce
1669the code needed to import and export the content between C data and XML
1670storage. This is left as an exercise to the reader :-)</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1671
Daniel Veillard6f0adb52000-07-03 11:41:26 +0000[diff] [blame]1672<p>Feel free to use <a href="example/gjobread.c">the code for the full C
1673parsing example</a> as a template, it is also available with Makefile in the
1674Gnome CVS base under gnome-xml/example</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1675
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1676<h2><a name="Contributi">Contributions</a></h2>
1677<ul>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1678 <li><a href="mailto:ari@lusis.org">Ari Johnson</a>
1679 provides a C++ wrapper for libxml:
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1680 <p>Website: <a
1681 href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/</a></p>
1682 <p>Download: <a
1683 href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/libxml++.tar.gz">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/libxml++.tar.gz</a></p>
1684 </li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1685 <li><a href="mailto:izlatkovic@daenet.de">Igor Zlatkovic</a>
1686 is now the maintainer of the Windows port, <a
Daniel Veillard95189532001-07-26 18:30:26 +0000[diff] [blame]1687 href="http://www.fh-frankfurt.de/~igor/projects/libxml/index.html">he
1688 provides binaries</a></li>
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1689 <li><a
1690 href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2001-March/msg00014.html">Matt
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1691 Sergeant</a>
1692 developped <a href="http://axkit.org/download/">XML::LibXSLT</a>, a perl
1693 wrapper for libxml2/libxslt as part of the <a
1694 href="http://axkit.com/">AxKit XML application server</a></li>
1695 <li><a href="mailto:fnatter@gmx.net">Felix Natter</a>
1696 and <a href="mailto:geertk@ai.rug.nl">Geert Kloosterman</a> provide <a
Daniel Veillardca989762001-06-23 17:39:29 +0000[diff] [blame]1697 href="libxml-doc.el">an emacs module</a> to lookup libxml(2) functions
Daniel Veillard3f6f7f62000-06-30 17:58:25 +0000[diff] [blame]1698 documentation</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1699 <li><a href="mailto:sherwin@nlm.nih.gov">Ziying Sherwin</a>
1700 provided <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages/0488.html">man
1701 pages</a></li>
Daniel Veillard5168dbf2001-07-07 00:18:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1702 <li>there is a module for <a
1703 href="http://acs-misc.sourceforge.net/nsxml.html">libxml/libxslt support
1704 in OpenNSD/AOLServer</a></li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1705 <li><a href="mailto:dkuhlman@cutter.rexx.com">Dave Kuhlman</a>
1706 provides libxml/libxslt <a href="http://www.rexx.com/~dkuhlman">wrappers
1707 for Python</a></li>
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1708</ul>
1709
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1710<p></p>
1711
Daniel Veillardf7ed3362001-08-17 12:01:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1712<p><a href="mailto:daniel@veillard.com">Daniel Veillard</a></p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1713
Daniel Veillard60087f32001-10-10 09:45:09 +0000[diff] [blame^]1714<p>$Id: xml.html,v 1.111 2001/09/15 09:21:44 veillard Exp $</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1715</body>
1716</html>