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blob: 4990b14c19a50a3ce0b4a8b3d4580cd093e46853 [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
158<p>Check the following too before posting:</p>
159<ul>
160 <li>make sure you are <a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">using a recent
161 version</a>, and that the problem still shows up in those</li>
162 <li>check the <a href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/">list
163 archives</a> to see if the problem was reported already, in this case
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000[diff] [blame^]164 there is probably a fix available, similary check the <a
165 href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml">registered
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]166 open bugs</a></li>
Daniel Veillard234547b2001-07-05 09:46:10 +0000[diff] [blame]167 <li>make sure you can reproduce the bug with xmllint or one of the test
168 programs found in source in the distribution</li>
169 <li>Please send the command showing the error as well as the input (as an
170 attachement)</li>
171</ul>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]172
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]173<p>Alternatively, you can just send the bug to the <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]174href="mailto:xml@gnome.org">xml@gnome.org</a> list; if it's really libxml
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]175related I will approve it.. Please do not send me mail directly especially
176for portability problem, it makes things really harder to track and in some
177cases I'm not the best person to answer a given question, ask the list
178instead.</p>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]179
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]180<p>Of course, bugs reported with a suggested patch for fixing them will
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]181probably be processed faster.</p>
182
183<p>If you're looking for help, a quick look at <a
Daniel Veillardf7ed3362001-08-17 12:01:21 +0000[diff] [blame]184href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/">the list archive</a> may actually
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]185provide the answer, I usually send source samples when answering libxml usage
Daniel Veillard6f0adb52000-07-03 11:41:26 +0000[diff] [blame]186questions. The <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/book1.html">auto-generated
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]187documentantion</a> is not as polished as I would like (i need to learn more
188about Docbook), but it's a good starting point.</p>
189
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]190<h2><a name="help">How to help</a></h2>
191
192<p>You can help the project in various ways, the best thing to do first is to
193subscribe to the mailing-list as explained before, check the <a
Daniel Veillardf7ed3362001-08-17 12:01:21 +0000[diff] [blame]194href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/">archives </a>and the <a
195href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml">Gnome bug
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]196database:</a>:</p>
197<ol>
198 <li>provide patches when you find problems</li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]199 <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]200 be integrated in all cases but help pinpointing portability problems
201 and</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]202 <li>provide documentation fixes (either as patches to the code comments or
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]203 as HTML diffs).</li>
204 <li>provide new documentations pieces (translations, examples, etc ...)</li>
205 <li>Check the TODO file and try to close one of the items</li>
206 <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^]207 provide a fix. <a href="mailto:daniel@veillard.com">Get in touch with me
208 </a>before to avoid synchronization problems and check that the suggested
209 fix will fit in nicely :-)</li>
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]210</ol>
211
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]212<h2><a name="Downloads">Downloads</a></h2>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]213
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]214<p>The latest versions of libxml can be found on <a
Daniel Veillard20c8cf22001-06-26 22:47:36 +0000[diff] [blame]215href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">xmlsoft.org</a> (<a
216href="ftp://speakeasy.rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/">Seattle</a>, <a
217href="ftp://fr.rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/">France</a>) or on the <a
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]218href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/MIRRORS.html">Gnome FTP server</a> either
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]219as a <a href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/libxml/">source
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]220archive</a> or <a
Daniel Veillarda41123c2001-04-22 19:31:20 +0000[diff] [blame]221href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/redhat/i386/libxml/">RPM
222packages</a>. (NOTE that you need both the <a
Daniel Veillardc19fccc2000-07-03 11:52:01 +0000[diff] [blame]223href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2.html">libxml(2)</a> and <a
224href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2-devel.html">libxml(2)-devel</a>
Daniel Veillard95189532001-07-26 18:30:26 +0000[diff] [blame]225packages installed to compile applications using libxml.) <a
226href="mailto:izlatkovic@daenet.de">Igor Zlatkovic</a> is now the maintainer
227of the Windows port, <a
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]228href="http://www.fh-frankfurt.de/~igor/projects/libxml/index.html">he
229provides binaries</a></p>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]230
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]231<p><a name="Snapshot">Snapshot:</a></p>
232<ul>
233 <li>Code from the W3C cvs base libxml <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]234 href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/cvs-snapshot.tar.gz">cvs-snapshot.tar.gz</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]235 <li>Docs, content of the web site, the list archive included <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]236 href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml-docs.tar.gz">libxml-docs.tar.gz</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]237</ul>
238
239<p><a name="Contribs">Contribs:</a></p>
240
241<p>I do accept external contributions, especially if compiling on another
242platform, 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]243<a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/contribs/">contrib directory</a></p>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]244
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]245<p>Libxml is also available from CVS:</p>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]246<ul>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]247 <li><p>The <a
248 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]249 CVS base</a>. Check the <a
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]250 href="http://developer.gnome.org/tools/cvs.html">Gnome CVS Tools</a>
251 page; the CVS module is <b>gnome-xml</b>.</p>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]252 </li>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]253 <li>The <strong>libxslt</strong> module is also present there</li>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]254</ul>
255
256<h2><a name="News">News</a></h2>
257
Daniel Veillard944b5ff1999-12-15 19:08:24 +0000[diff] [blame]258<h3>CVS only : check the <a
259href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gnome-xml/ChangeLog">Changelog</a> file
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]260for a really accurate description</h3>
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]261
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]262<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]263you want to test those</p>
264<ul>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]265 <li>Implementing <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT">XSLT</a>, this is done
266 as a separate C library on top of libxml called libxslt</li>
Daniel Veillard28929b22000-11-13 18:22:49 +0000[diff] [blame]267 <li>Finishing up <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr">XPointer</a> and <a
268 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude">XInclude</a></li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]269 <li>(seeems working but delayed from release) parsing/import of Docbook
270 SGML docs</li>
271</ul>
272
273<h3>2.4.2: Aug 15 2001</h3>
274<ul>
275 <li>adds xmlLineNumbersDefault() to control line number generation</li>
276 <li>lot of bug fixes</li>
277 <li>the Microsoft MSC projects files shuld now be up to date</li>
278 <li>inheritance of namespaces from DTD defaulted attributes</li>
279 <li>fixes a serious potential security bug</li>
280 <li>added a --format option to xmllint</li>
281</ul>
282
283<h3>2.4.1: July 24 2001</h3>
284<ul>
285 <li>possibility to keep line numbers in the tree</li>
286 <li>some computation NaN fixes</li>
287 <li>extension of the XPath API</li>
288 <li>cleanup for alpha and ia64 targets</li>
289 <li>patch to allow saving through HTTP PUT or POST</li>
Daniel Veillard09ab7e12001-07-10 15:49:44 +0000[diff] [blame]290</ul>
291
292<h3>2.4.0: July 10 2001</h3>
293<ul>
294 <li>Fixed a few bugs in XPath, validation, and tree handling.</li>
295 <li>Fixed XML Base implementation, added a coupel of examples to the
296 regression tests</li>
297 <li>A bit of cleanup</li>
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]298</ul>
299
Daniel Veillard5b43fde2001-07-05 23:31:40 +0000[diff] [blame]300<h3>2.3.14: July 5 2001</h3>
301<ul>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]302 <li>fixed some entities problems and reduce mem requirement when
303 substituing them</li>
Daniel Veillard5b43fde2001-07-05 23:31:40 +0000[diff] [blame]304 <li>lots of improvements in the XPath queries interpreter can be
305 substancially faster</li>
306 <li>Makefiles and configure cleanups</li>
307 <li>Fixes to XPath variable eval, and compare on empty node set</li>
308 <li>HTML tag closing bug fixed</li>
309 <li>Fixed an URI reference computating problem when validating</li>
310</ul>
311
Daniel Veillard2adbb512001-06-28 16:20:36 +0000[diff] [blame]312<h3>2.3.13: June 28 2001</h3>
313<ul>
314 <li>2.3.12 configure.in was broken as well as the push mode XML parser</li>
315 <li>a few more fixes for compilation on Windows MSC by Yon Derek</li>
316</ul>
317
318<h3>1.8.14: June 28 2001</h3>
319<ul>
320 <li>Zbigniew Chyla gave a patch to use the old XML parser in push mode</li>
321 <li>Small Makefile fix</li>
322</ul>
323
Daniel Veillard11648102001-06-26 16:08:24 +0000[diff] [blame]324<h3>2.3.12: June 26 2001</h3>
325<ul>
326 <li>lots of cleanup</li>
327 <li>a couple of validation fix</li>
328 <li>fixed line number counting</li>
329 <li>fixed serious problems in the XInclude processing</li>
330 <li>added support for UTF8 BOM at beginning of entities</li>
331 <li>fixed a strange gcc optimizer bugs in xpath handling of float, gcc-3.0
332 miscompile uri.c (William), Thomas Leitner provided a fix for the
333 optimizer on Tru64</li>
334 <li>incorporated Yon Derek and Igor Zlatkovic fixes and improvements for
335 compilation on Windows MSC</li>
336 <li>update of libxml-doc.el (Felix Natter)</li>
337 <li>fixed 2 bugs in URI normalization code</li>
338</ul>
339
Daniel Veillarde3c81b52001-06-17 14:50:34 +0000[diff] [blame]340<h3>2.3.11: June 17 2001</h3>
341<ul>
342 <li>updates to trio, Makefiles and configure should fix some portability
343 problems (alpha)</li>
344 <li>fixed some HTML serialization problems (pre, script, and block/inline
345 handling), added encoding aware APIs, cleanup of this code</li>
346 <li>added xmlHasNsProp()</li>
347 <li>implemented a specific PI for encoding support in the DocBook SGML
348 parser</li>
349 <li>some XPath fixes (-Infinity, / as a function parameter and namespaces
350 node selection)</li>
351 <li>fixed a performance problem and an error in the validation code</li>
352 <li>fixed XInclude routine to implement the recursive behaviour</li>
353 <li>fixed xmlFreeNode problem when libxml is included statically twice</li>
354 <li>added --version to xmllint for bug reports</li>
355</ul>
356
Daniel Veillard2e4f1882001-06-01 10:11:57 +0000[diff] [blame]357<h3>2.3.10: June 1 2001</h3>
358<ul>
359 <li>fixed the SGML catalog support</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]360 <li>a number of reported bugs got fixed, in XPath, iconv detection,
361 XInclude processing</li>
Daniel Veillard2e4f1882001-06-01 10:11:57 +0000[diff] [blame]362 <li>XPath string function should now handle unicode correctly</li>
363</ul>
364
Daniel Veillard4623acd2001-05-19 15:13:15 +0000[diff] [blame]365<h3>2.3.9: May 19 2001</h3>
366
367<p>Lots of bugfixes, and added a basic SGML catalog support:</p>
368<ul>
369 <li>HTML push bugfix #54891 and another patch from Jonas Borgström</li>
370 <li>some serious speed optimisation again</li>
371 <li>some documentation cleanups</li>
372 <li>trying to get better linking on solaris (-R)</li>
373 <li>XPath API cleanup from Thomas Broyer</li>
374 <li>Validation bug fixed #54631, added a patch from Gary Pennington, fixed
375 xmlValidGetValidElements()</li>
376 <li>Added an INSTALL file</li>
377 <li>Attribute removal added to API: #54433</li>
378 <li>added a basic support for SGML catalogs</li>
379 <li>fixed xmlKeepBlanksDefault(0) API</li>
380 <li>bugfix in xmlNodeGetLang()</li>
381 <li>fixed a small configure portability problem</li>
382 <li>fixed an inversion of SYSTEM and PUBLIC identifier in HTML document</li>
383</ul>
384
Daniel Veillarda265af72001-05-14 11:13:58 +0000[diff] [blame]385<h3>1.8.13: May 14 2001</h3>
386<ul>
387 <li>bugfixes release of the old libxml1 branch used by Gnome</li>
388</ul>
389
Daniel Veillard3bbbe6f2001-05-03 11:15:37 +0000[diff] [blame]390<h3>2.3.8: May 3 2001</h3>
391<ul>
392 <li>Integrated an SGML DocBook parser for the Gnome project</li>
393 <li>Fixed a few things in the HTML parser</li>
394 <li>Fixed some XPath bugs raised by XSLT use, tried to fix the floating
395 point portability issue</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]396 <li>Speed improvement (8M/s for SAX, 3M/s for DOM, 1.5M/s for
397 DOM+validation using the XML REC as input and a 700MHz celeron).</li>
Daniel Veillard3bbbe6f2001-05-03 11:15:37 +0000[diff] [blame]398 <li>incorporated more Windows cleanup</li>
399 <li>added xmlSaveFormatFile()</li>
400 <li>fixed problems in copying nodes with entities references (gdome)</li>
401 <li>removed some troubles surrounding the new validation module</li>
402</ul>
403
Daniel Veillarda41123c2001-04-22 19:31:20 +0000[diff] [blame]404<h3>2.3.7: April 22 2001</h3>
405<ul>
406 <li>lots of small bug fixes, corrected XPointer</li>
407 <li>Non determinist content model validation support</li>
408 <li>added xmlDocCopyNode for gdome2</li>
409 <li>revamped the way the HTML parser handles end of tags</li>
410 <li>XPath: corrctions of namespacessupport and number formatting</li>
411 <li>Windows: Igor Zlatkovic patches for MSC compilation</li>
412 <li>HTML ouput fixes from P C Chow and William M. Brack</li>
413 <li>Improved validation speed sensible for DocBook</li>
414 <li>fixed a big bug with ID declared in external parsed entities</li>
415 <li>portability fixes, update of Trio from Bjorn Reese</li>
416</ul>
417
Daniel Veillardafc73112001-04-11 11:51:41 +0000[diff] [blame]418<h3>2.3.6: April 8 2001</h3>
419<ul>
420 <li>Code cleanup using extreme gcc compiler warning options, found and
421 cleared half a dozen potential problem</li>
422 <li>the Eazel team found an XML parser bug</li>
423 <li>cleaned up the user of some of the string formatting function. used the
424 trio library code to provide the one needed when the platform is missing
425 them</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]426 <li>xpath: removed a memory leak and fixed the predicate evaluation
427 problem, extended the testsuite and cleaned up the result. XPointer seems
428 broken ...</li>
Daniel Veillardafc73112001-04-11 11:51:41 +0000[diff] [blame]429</ul>
430
Daniel Veillard56a4cb82001-03-24 17:00:36 +0000[diff] [blame]431<h3>2.3.5: Mar 23 2001</h3>
432<ul>
433 <li>Biggest change is separate parsing and evaluation of XPath expressions,
434 there is some new APIs for this too</li>
435 <li>included a number of bug fixes(XML push parser, 51876, notations,
436 52299)</li>
437 <li>Fixed some portability issues</li>
438</ul>
439
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame]440<h3>2.3.4: Mar 10 2001</h3>
441<ul>
442 <li>Fixed bugs #51860 and #51861</li>
443 <li>Added a global variable xmlDefaultBufferSize to allow default buffer
444 size to be application tunable.</li>
445 <li>Some cleanup in the validation code, still a bug left and this part
446 should probably be rewritten to support ambiguous content model :-\</li>
447 <li>Fix a couple of serious bugs introduced or raised by changes in 2.3.3
448 parser</li>
449 <li>Fixed another bug in xmlNodeGetContent()</li>
450 <li>Bjorn fixed XPath node collection and Number formatting</li>
451 <li>Fixed a loop reported in the HTML parsing</li>
452 <li>blank space are reported even if the Dtd content model proves that they
453 are formatting spaces, this is for XmL conformance</li>
454</ul>
455
Daniel Veillardb402c072001-03-01 17:28:58 +0000[diff] [blame]456<h3>2.3.3: Mar 1 2001</h3>
457<ul>
458 <li>small change in XPath for XSLT</li>
459 <li>documentation cleanups</li>
460 <li>fix in validation by Gary Pennington</li>
461 <li>serious parsing performances improvements</li>
462</ul>
463
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]464<h3>2.3.2: Feb 24 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard71681102001-02-24 17:48:53 +0000[diff] [blame]465<ul>
466 <li>chasing XPath bugs, found a bunch, completed some TODO</li>
467 <li>fixed a Dtd parsing bug</li>
468 <li>fixed a bug in xmlNodeGetContent</li>
469 <li>ID/IDREF support partly rewritten by Gary Pennington</li>
470</ul>
471
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]472<h3>2.3.1: Feb 15 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]473<ul>
474 <li>some XPath and HTML bug fixes for XSLT</li>
475 <li>small extension of the hash table interfaces for DOM gdome2
476 implementation</li>
477 <li>A few bug fixes</li>
478</ul>
479
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]480<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]481<ul>
482 <li>Lots of XPath bug fixes</li>
483 <li>Add a mode with Dtd lookup but without validation error reporting for
484 XSLT</li>
485 <li>Add support for text node without escaping (XSLT)</li>
486 <li>bug fixes for xmlCheckFilename</li>
487 <li>validation code bug fixes from Gary Pennington</li>
488 <li>Patch from Paul D. Smith correcting URI path normalization</li>
489 <li>Patch to allow simultaneous install of libxml-devel and
490 libxml2-devel</li>
491 <li>the example Makefile is now fixed</li>
492 <li>added HTML to the RPM packages</li>
493 <li>tree copying bugfixes</li>
494 <li>updates to Windows makefiles</li>
495 <li>optimisation patch from Bjorn Reese</li>
496</ul>
497
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]498<h3>2.2.11: Jan 4 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard503b8932001-01-05 06:36:31 +0000[diff] [blame]499<ul>
500 <li>bunch of bug fixes (memory I/O, xpath, ftp/http, ...)</li>
501 <li>added htmlHandleOmittedElem()</li>
502 <li>Applied Bjorn Reese's IPV6 first patch</li>
503 <li>Applied Paul D. Smith patches for validation of XInclude results</li>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]504 <li>added XPointer xmlns() new scheme support</li>
Daniel Veillard503b8932001-01-05 06:36:31 +0000[diff] [blame]505</ul>
506
Daniel Veillard2ddd23d2000-11-25 10:42:19 +0000[diff] [blame]507<h3>2.2.10: Nov 25 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard9d343c42000-11-25 10:12:43 +0000[diff] [blame]508<ul>
509 <li>Fix the Windows problems of 2.2.8</li>
510 <li>integrate OpenVMS patches</li>
511 <li>better handling of some nasty HTML input</li>
512 <li>Improved the XPointer implementation</li>
513 <li>integrate a number of provided patches</li>
514</ul>
515
Daniel Veillard2ddd23d2000-11-25 10:42:19 +0000[diff] [blame]516<h3>2.2.9: Nov 25 2000</h3>
517<ul>
518 <li>erroneous release :-(</li>
519</ul>
520
Daniel Veillard28929b22000-11-13 18:22:49 +0000[diff] [blame]521<h3>2.2.8: Nov 13 2000</h3>
522<ul>
523 <li>First version of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude">XInclude</a>
524 support</li>
525 <li>Patch in conditional section handling</li>
526 <li>updated MS compiler project</li>
527 <li>fixed some XPath problems</li>
528 <li>added an URI escaping function</li>
529 <li>some other bug fixes</li>
530</ul>
531
532<h3>2.2.7: Oct 31 2000</h3>
533<ul>
534 <li>added message redirection</li>
535 <li>XPath improvements (thanks TOM !)</li>
536 <li>xmlIOParseDTD() added</li>
537 <li>various small fixes in the HTML, URI, HTTP and XPointer support</li>
538 <li>some cleanup of the Makefile, autoconf and the distribution content</li>
539</ul>
540
Daniel Veillard29a11cc2000-10-25 13:32:39 +0000[diff] [blame]541<h3>2.2.6: Oct 25 2000:</h3>
542<ul>
543 <li>Added an hash table module, migrated a number of internal structure to
544 those</li>
545 <li>Fixed a posteriori validation problems</li>
546 <li>HTTP module cleanups</li>
547 <li>HTML parser improvements (tag errors, script/style handling, attribute
548 normalization)</li>
549 <li>coalescing of adjacent text nodes</li>
550 <li>couple of XPath bug fixes, exported the internal API</li>
551</ul>
552
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]553<h3>2.2.5: Oct 15 2000:</h3>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]554<ul>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]555 <li>XPointer implementation and testsuite</li>
556 <li>Lot of XPath fixes, added variable and functions registration, more
557 tests</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]558 <li>Portability fixes, lots of enhancements toward an easy Windows build
559 and release</li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]560 <li>Late validation fixes</li>
561 <li>Integrated a lot of contributed patches</li>
562 <li>added memory management docs</li>
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]563 <li>a performance problem when using large buffer seems fixed</li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]564</ul>
565
566<h3>2.2.4: Oct 1 2000:</h3>
567<ul>
568 <li>main XPath problem fixed</li>
569 <li>Integrated portability patches for Windows</li>
570 <li>Serious bug fixes on the URI and HTML code</li>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]571</ul>
572
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]573<h3>2.2.3: Sep 17 2000</h3>
574<ul>
575 <li>bug fixes</li>
576 <li>cleanup of entity handling code</li>
577 <li>overall review of all loops in the parsers, all sprintf usage has been
578 checked too</li>
579 <li>Far better handling of larges Dtd. Validating against Docbook XML Dtd
580 works smoothly now.</li>
581</ul>
582
583<h3>1.8.10: Sep 6 2000</h3>
584<ul>
585 <li>bug fix release for some Gnome projects</li>
586</ul>
587
588<h3>2.2.2: August 12 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard786d7c82000-08-12 23:38:57 +0000[diff] [blame]589<ul>
590 <li>mostly bug fixes</li>
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]591 <li>started adding routines to access xml parser context options</li>
Daniel Veillard786d7c82000-08-12 23:38:57 +0000[diff] [blame]592</ul>
593
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]594<h3>2.2.1: July 21 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillarda2679fa2000-07-22 02:38:15 +0000[diff] [blame]595<ul>
596 <li>a purely bug fixes release</li>
597 <li>fixed an encoding support problem when parsing from a memory block</li>
598 <li>fixed a DOCTYPE parsing problem</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]599 <li>removed a bug in the function allowing to override the memory
600 allocation routines</li>
Daniel Veillarda2679fa2000-07-22 02:38:15 +0000[diff] [blame]601</ul>
602
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]603<h3>2.2.0: July 14 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard94e90602000-07-17 14:38:19 +0000[diff] [blame]604<ul>
605 <li>applied a lot of portability fixes</li>
606 <li>better encoding support/cleanup and saving (content is now always
607 encoded in UTF-8)</li>
608 <li>the HTML parser now correctly handles encodings</li>
609 <li>added xmlHasProp()</li>
610 <li>fixed a serious problem with &amp;#38;</li>
611 <li>propagated the fix to FTP client</li>
612 <li>cleanup, bugfixes, etc ...</li>
613 <li>Added a page about <a href="encoding.html">libxml Internationalization
614 support</a></li>
615</ul>
616
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]617<h3>1.8.9: July 9 2000</h3>
618<ul>
619 <li>fixed the spec the RPMs should be better</li>
620 <li>fixed a serious bug in the FTP implementation, released 1.8.9 to solve
621 rpmfind users problem</li>
622</ul>
623
Daniel Veillard6388e172000-07-03 16:07:19 +0000[diff] [blame]624<h3>2.1.1: July 1 2000</h3>
625<ul>
626 <li>fixes a couple of bugs in the 2.1.0 packaging</li>
627 <li>improvements on the HTML parser</li>
628</ul>
629
Daniel Veillard3f6f7f62000-06-30 17:58:25 +0000[diff] [blame]630<h3>2.1.0 and 1.8.8: June 29 2000</h3>
631<ul>
632 <li>1.8.8 is mostly a comodity package for upgrading to libxml2 accoding to
633 <a href="upgrade.html">new instructions</a>. It fixes a nasty problem
634 about &amp;#38; charref parsing</li>
635 <li>2.1.0 also ease the upgrade from libxml v1 to the recent version. it
636 also contains numerous fixes and enhancements:
637 <ul>
638 <li>added xmlStopParser() to stop parsing</li>
639 <li>improved a lot parsing speed when there is large CDATA blocs</li>
640 <li>includes XPath patches provided by Picdar Technology</li>
641 <li>tried to fix as much as possible DtD validation and namespace
642 related problems</li>
643 <li>output to a given encoding has been added/tested</li>
644 <li>lot of various fixes</li>
645 </ul>
646 </li>
647</ul>
648
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]649<h3>2.0.0: Apr 12 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]650<ul>
651 <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]652 idea to check the 1.x to 2.x upgrade instructions. NOTE: while initally
653 scheduled for Apr 3 the relase occured only on Apr 12 due to massive
654 workload.</li>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]655 <li>The include are now located under $prefix/include/libxml (instead of
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]656 $prefix/include/gnome-xml), they also are referenced by
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]657 <pre>#include &lt;libxml/xxx.h&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]658 <p>instead of</p>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]659 <pre>#include "xxx.h"</pre>
660 </li>
Daniel Veillard8f621982000-03-20 13:07:15 +0000[diff] [blame]661 <li>a new URI module for parsing URIs and following strictly RFC 2396</li>
662 <li>the memory allocation routines used by libxml can now be overloaded
663 dynamically by using xmlMemSetup()</li>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]664 <li>The previously CVS only tool tester has been renamed
665 <strong>xmllint</strong> and is now installed as part of the libxml2
666 package</li>
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]667 <li>The I/O interface has been revamped. There is now ways to plug in
668 specific I/O modules, either at the URI scheme detection level using
669 xmlRegisterInputCallbacks() or by passing I/O functions when creating a
670 parser context using xmlCreateIOParserCtxt()</li>
671 <li>there is a C preprocessor macro LIBXML_VERSION providing the version
672 number of the libxml module in use</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]673 <li>a number of optional features of libxml can now be excluded at
674 configure time (FTP/HTTP/HTML/XPath/Debug)</li>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]675</ul>
676
677<h3>2.0.0beta: Mar 14 2000</h3>
678<ul>
679 <li>This is a first Beta release of libxml version 2</li>
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame]680 <li>It's available only from<a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">xmlsoft.org
681 FTP</a>, it's packaged as libxml2-2.0.0beta and available as tar and
682 RPMs</li>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]683 <li>This version is now the head in the Gnome CVS base, the old one is
684 available under the tag LIB_XML_1_X</li>
685 <li>This includes a very large set of changes. Froma programmatic point of
686 view applications should not have to be modified too much, check the <a
687 href="upgrade.html">upgrade page</a></li>
688 <li>Some interfaces may changes (especially a bit about encoding).</li>
689 <li>the updates includes:
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]690 <ul>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]691 <li>fix I18N support. ISO-Latin-x/UTF-8/UTF-16 (nearly) seems correctly
692 handled now</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]693 <li>Better handling of entities, especially well formedness checking
694 and proper PEref extensions in external subsets</li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]695 <li>DTD conditional sections</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]696 <li>Validation now correcly handle entities content</li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]697 <li><a href="http://rpmfind.net/tools/gdome/messages/0039.html">change
698 structures to accomodate DOM</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]699 </ul>
700 </li>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]701 <li>Serious progress were made toward compliance, <a
702 href="conf/result.html">here are the result of the test</a> against the
703 OASIS testsuite (except the japanese tests since I don't support that
704 encoding yet). This URL is rebuilt every couple of hours using the CVS
705 head version.</li>
Daniel Veillarde41f2b72000-01-30 20:00:07 +0000[diff] [blame]706</ul>
707
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]708<h3>1.8.7: Mar 6 2000</h3>
709<ul>
710 <li>This is a bug fix release:</li>
711 <li>It is possible to disable the ignorable blanks heuristic used by
712 libxml-1.x, a new function xmlKeepBlanksDefault(0) will allow this. Note
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]713 that for adherence to XML spec, this behaviour will be disabled by
714 default in 2.x . The same function will allow to keep compatibility for
715 old code.</li>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]716 <li>Blanks in &lt;a&gt; &lt;/a&gt; constructs are not ignored anymore,
717 avoiding heuristic is really the Right Way :-\</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]718 <li>The unchecked use of snprintf which was breaking libxml-1.8.6
719 compilation on some platforms has been fixed</li>
720 <li>nanoftp.c nanohttp.c: Fixed '#' and '?' stripping when processing
721 URIs</li>
722</ul>
723
Daniel Veillarde41f2b72000-01-30 20:00:07 +0000[diff] [blame]724<h3>1.8.6: Jan 31 2000</h3>
725<ul>
726 <li>added a nanoFTP transport module, debugged until the new version of <a
727 href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/rpmfind.html">rpmfind</a> can use
728 it without troubles</li>
Daniel Veillardda07c342000-01-25 18:31:22 +0000[diff] [blame]729</ul>
730
731<h3>1.8.5: Jan 21 2000</h3>
732<ul>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]733 <li>adding APIs to parse a well balanced chunk of XML (production <a
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]734 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#NT-content">[43] content</a> of the
735 XML spec)</li>
Daniel Veillard461a66c2000-01-18 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]736 <li>fixed a hideous bug in xmlGetProp pointed by Rune.Djurhuus@fast.no</li>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]737 <li>Jody Goldberg &lt;jgoldberg@home.com&gt; provided another patch trying
738 to solve the zlib checks problems</li>
Daniel Veillard461a66c2000-01-18 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]739 <li>The current state in gnome CVS base is expected to ship as 1.8.5 with
740 gnumeric soon</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]741</ul>
742
743<h3>1.8.4: Jan 13 2000</h3>
744<ul>
745 <li>bug fixes, reintroduced xmlNewGlobalNs(), fixed xmlNewNs()</li>
746 <li>all exit() call should have been removed from libxml</li>
747 <li>fixed a problem with INCLUDE_WINSOCK on WIN32 platform</li>
748 <li>added newDocFragment()</li>
Daniel Veillardf84f71f2000-01-05 19:54:23 +0000[diff] [blame]749</ul>
750
751<h3>1.8.3: Jan 5 2000</h3>
752<ul>
753 <li>a Push interface for the XML and HTML parsers</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]754 <li>a shell-like interface to the document tree (try tester --shell :-)</li>
Daniel Veillarddbfd6411999-12-28 16:35:14 +0000[diff] [blame]755 <li>lots of bug fixes and improvement added over XMas hollidays</li>
Daniel Veillard437b87b2000-01-03 17:30:46 +0000[diff] [blame]756 <li>fixed the DTD parsing code to work with the xhtml DTD</li>
Daniel Veillardf84f71f2000-01-05 19:54:23 +0000[diff] [blame]757 <li>added xmlRemoveProp(), xmlRemoveID() and xmlRemoveRef()</li>
758 <li>Fixed bugs in xmlNewNs()</li>
Daniel Veillard437b87b2000-01-03 17:30:46 +0000[diff] [blame]759 <li>External entity loading code has been revamped, now it uses
Daniel Veillardf84f71f2000-01-05 19:54:23 +0000[diff] [blame]760 xmlLoadExternalEntity(), some fix on entities processing were added</li>
Daniel Veillard437b87b2000-01-03 17:30:46 +0000[diff] [blame]761 <li>cleaned up WIN32 includes of socket stuff</li>
Daniel Veillard5cb5ab81999-12-21 15:35:29 +0000[diff] [blame]762</ul>
763
764<h3>1.8.2: Dec 21 1999</h3>
765<ul>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]766 <li>I got another problem with includes and C++, I hope this issue is fixed
767 for good this time</li>
Daniel Veillard5cb5ab81999-12-21 15:35:29 +0000[diff] [blame]768 <li>Added a few tree modification functions: xmlReplaceNode,
769 xmlAddPrevSibling, xmlAddNextSibling, xmlNodeSetName and
770 xmlDocSetRootElement</li>
771 <li>Tried to improve the HTML output with help from <a
772 href="mailto:clahey@umich.edu">Chris Lahey</a></li>
Daniel Veillarde4e51311999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]773</ul>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]774
Daniel Veillarde4e51311999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]775<h3>1.8.1: Dec 18 1999</h3>
776<ul>
777 <li>various patches to avoid troubles when using libxml with C++ compilers
778 the "namespace" keyword and C escaping in include files</li>
779 <li>a problem in one of the core macros IS_CHAR was corrected</li>
780 <li>fixed a bug introduced in 1.8.0 breaking default namespace processing,
781 and more specifically the Dia application</li>
Daniel Veillard944b5ff1999-12-15 19:08:24 +0000[diff] [blame]782 <li>fixed a posteriori validation (validation after parsing, or by using a
783 Dtd not specified in the original document)</li>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]784 <li>fixed a bug in</li>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]785</ul>
786
787<h3>1.8.0: Dec 12 1999</h3>
788<ul>
789 <li>cleanup, especially memory wise</li>
790 <li>the parser should be more reliable, especially the HTML one, it should
791 not crash, whatever the input !</li>
792 <li>Integrated various patches, especially a speedup improvement for large
793 dataset from <a href="mailto:cnygard@bellatlantic.net">Carl Nygard</a>,
794 configure with --with-buffers to enable them.</li>
795 <li>attribute normalization, oops should have been added long ago !</li>
796 <li>attributes defaulted from Dtds should be available, xmlSetProp() now
797 does entities escapting by default.</li>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]798</ul>
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]799
800<h3>1.7.4: Oct 25 1999</h3>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]801<ul>
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]802 <li>Lots of HTML improvement</li>
803 <li>Fixed some errors when saving both XML and HTML</li>
804 <li>More examples, the regression tests should now look clean</li>
805 <li>Fixed a bug with contiguous charref</li>
806</ul>
807
808<h3>1.7.3: Sep 29 1999</h3>
809<ul>
810 <li>portability problems fixed</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]811 <li>snprintf was used unconditionnally, leading to link problems on system
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]812 were it's not available, fixed</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]813</ul>
814
815<h3>1.7.1: Sep 24 1999</h3>
816<ul>
817 <li>The basic type for strings manipulated by libxml has been renamed in
818 1.7.1 from <strong>CHAR</strong> to <strong>xmlChar</strong>. The reason
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]819 is that CHAR was conflicting with a predefined type on Windows. However
820 on non WIN32 environment, compatibility is provided by the way of a
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]821 <strong>#define </strong>.</li>
822 <li>Changed another error : the use of a structure field called errno, and
823 leading to troubles on platforms where it's a macro</li>
824</ul>
825
826<h3>1.7.0: sep 23 1999</h3>
827<ul>
828 <li>Added the ability to fetch remote DTD or parsed entities, see the <a
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]829 href="html/libxml-nanohttp.html">nanohttp</a> module.</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]830 <li>Added an errno to report errors by another mean than a simple printf
831 like callback</li>
832 <li>Finished ID/IDREF support and checking when validation</li>
833 <li>Serious memory leaks fixed (there is now a <a
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]834 href="html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">memory wrapper</a> module)</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]835 <li>Improvement of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath">XPath</a>
836 implementation</li>
837 <li>Added an HTML parser front-end</li>
838</ul>
839
840<h2><a name="XML">XML</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]841
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]842<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]843markup-based structured documents. Here is <a name="example">an example XML
844document</a>:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]845<pre>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
846&lt;EXAMPLE prop1="gnome is great" prop2="&amp;amp; linux too"&gt;
847 &lt;head&gt;
848 &lt;title&gt;Welcome to Gnome&lt;/title&gt;
849 &lt;/head&gt;
850 &lt;chapter&gt;
851 &lt;title&gt;The Linux adventure&lt;/title&gt;
852 &lt;p&gt;bla bla bla ...&lt;/p&gt;
853 &lt;image href="linus.gif"/&gt;
854 &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;
855 &lt;/chapter&gt;
856&lt;/EXAMPLE&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]857
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]858<p>The first line specifies that it's an XML document and gives useful
859information about its encoding. Then the document is a text format whose
860structure is specified by tags between brackets. <strong>Each tag opened has
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]861to be closed</strong>. XML is pedantic about this. However, if a tag is empty
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]862(no content), a single tag can serve as both the opening and closing tag if
863it ends with <code>/&gt;</code> rather than with <code>&gt;</code>. Note
864that, for example, the image tag has no content (just an attribute) and is
865closed by ending the tag with <code>/&gt;</code>.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]866
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]867<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]868structured document maintenance (where it follows the steps of SGML) to
869simple data encoding mechanisms like configuration file formatting (glade),
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]870spreadsheets (gnumeric), or even shorter lived documents such as WebDAV where
871it is used to encode remote calls between a client and a server.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]872
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]873<h2><a name="XSLT">XSLT</a></h2>
874
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]875<p>Check <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT">the separate libxslt page</a></p>
876
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]877<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt">XSL Transformations</a>, is a
878language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents (or
879HTML/textual output).</p>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]880
881<p>A separate library called libxslt is being built on top of libxml2. This
882module "libxslt" can be found in the Gnome CVS base too.</p>
883
Daniel Veillard383b1472001-01-23 11:39:52 +0000[diff] [blame]884<p>You can check the <a
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]885href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/libxslt/FEATURES">features</a>
886supported and the progresses on the <a
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]887href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/libxslt/ChangeLog">Changelog</a></p>
888
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]889<h2>An overview of libxml architecture</h2>
890
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]891<p>Libxml is made of multiple components; some of them are optional, and most
892of the block interfaces are public. The main components are:</p>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]893<ul>
894 <li>an Input/Output layer</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]895 <li>FTP and HTTP client layers (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]896 <li>an Internationalization layer managing the encodings support</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]897 <li>a URI module</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]898 <li>the XML parser and its basic SAX interface</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]899 <li>an HTML parser using the same SAX interface (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]900 <li>a SAX tree module to build an in-memory DOM representation</li>
901 <li>a tree module to manipulate the DOM representation</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]902 <li>a validation module using the DOM representation (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]903 <li>an XPath module for global lookup in a DOM representation
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]904 (optional)</li>
905 <li>a debug module (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]906</ul>
907
908<p>Graphically this gives the following:</p>
909
910<p><img src="libxml.gif" alt="a graphical view of the various"></p>
911
912<p></p>
913
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]914<h2><a name="tree">The tree output</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]915
916<p>The parser returns a tree built during the document analysis. The value
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]917returned is an <strong>xmlDocPtr</strong> (i.e., a pointer to an
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]918<strong>xmlDoc</strong> structure). This structure contains information such
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]919as the file name, the document type, and a <strong>children</strong> pointer
920which is the root of the document (or more exactly the first child under the
921root which is the document). The tree is made of <strong>xmlNode</strong>s,
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]922chained in double-linked lists of siblings and with a children&lt;-&gt;parent
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]923relationship. An xmlNode can also carry properties (a chain of xmlAttr
924structures). An attribute may have a value which is a list of TEXT or
925ENTITY_REF nodes.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]926
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]927<p>Here is an example (erroneous with respect to the XML spec since there
928should be only one ELEMENT under the root):</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]929
930<p><img src="structure.gif" alt=" structure.gif "></p>
931
932<p>In the source package there is a small program (not installed by default)
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]933called <strong>xmllint</strong> which parses XML files given as argument and
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]934prints them back as parsed. This is useful for detecting errors both in XML
935code and in the XML parser itself. It has an option <strong>--debug</strong>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]936which prints the actual in-memory structure of the document; here is the
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]937result with the <a href="#example">example</a> given before:</p>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]938<pre>DOCUMENT
939version=1.0
940standalone=true
941 ELEMENT EXAMPLE
942 ATTRIBUTE prop1
943 TEXT
944 content=gnome is great
945 ATTRIBUTE prop2
946 ENTITY_REF
947 TEXT
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]948 content= linux too
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]949 ELEMENT head
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]950 ELEMENT title
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]951 TEXT
952 content=Welcome to Gnome
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]953 ELEMENT chapter
954 ELEMENT title
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]955 TEXT
956 content=The Linux adventure
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]957 ELEMENT p
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]958 TEXT
959 content=bla bla bla ...
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]960 ELEMENT image
961 ATTRIBUTE href
962 TEXT
963 content=linus.gif
964 ELEMENT p
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]965 TEXT
966 content=...</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]967
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]968<p>This should be useful for learning the internal representation model.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]969
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]970<h2><a name="interface">The SAX interface</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]971
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]972<p>Sometimes the DOM tree output is just too large to fit reasonably into
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]973memory. 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]974loaded using libxml), it's better to use the SAX interface of libxml. SAX is
975a <strong>callback-based interface</strong> to the parser. Before parsing,
976the application layer registers a customized set of callbacks which are
977called by the library as it progresses through the XML input.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]978
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]979<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]980libxml, see the <a
981href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">nice
982documentation</a>.written by <a href="mailto:james@daa.com.au">James
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]983Henstridge</a>.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]984
985<p>You can debug the SAX behaviour by using the <strong>testSAX</strong>
986program located in the gnome-xml module (it's usually not shipped in the
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]987binary packages of libxml, but you can find it in the tar source
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]988distribution). Here is the sequence of callbacks that would be reported by
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]989testSAX when parsing the example XML document shown earlier:</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]990<pre>SAX.setDocumentLocator()
991SAX.startDocument()
992SAX.getEntity(amp)
993SAX.startElement(EXAMPLE, prop1='gnome is great', prop2='&amp;amp; linux too')
994SAX.characters( , 3)
995SAX.startElement(head)
996SAX.characters( , 4)
997SAX.startElement(title)
998SAX.characters(Welcome to Gnome, 16)
999SAX.endElement(title)
1000SAX.characters( , 3)
1001SAX.endElement(head)
1002SAX.characters( , 3)
1003SAX.startElement(chapter)
1004SAX.characters( , 4)
1005SAX.startElement(title)
1006SAX.characters(The Linux adventure, 19)
1007SAX.endElement(title)
1008SAX.characters( , 4)
1009SAX.startElement(p)
1010SAX.characters(bla bla bla ..., 15)
1011SAX.endElement(p)
1012SAX.characters( , 4)
1013SAX.startElement(image, href='linus.gif')
1014SAX.endElement(image)
1015SAX.characters( , 4)
1016SAX.startElement(p)
1017SAX.characters(..., 3)
1018SAX.endElement(p)
1019SAX.characters( , 3)
1020SAX.endElement(chapter)
1021SAX.characters( , 1)
1022SAX.endElement(EXAMPLE)
1023SAX.endDocument()</pre>
1024
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1025<p>Most of the other interfaces of libxml are based on the DOM tree-building
1026facility, so nearly everything up to the end of this document presupposes the
1027use of the standard DOM tree build. Note that the DOM tree itself is built by
1028a set of registered default callbacks, without internal specific
1029interface.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1030
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1031<h2><a name="library">The XML library interfaces</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1032
1033<p>This section is directly intended to help programmers getting bootstrapped
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1034using the XML library from the C language. It is not intended to be
1035extensive. I hope the automatically generated documents will provide the
1036completeness required, but as a separate set of documents. The interfaces of
1037the XML library are by principle low level, there is nearly zero abstraction.
1038Those interested in a higher level API should <a href="#DOM">look at
1039DOM</a>.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1040
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1041<p>The <a href="html/libxml-parser.html">parser interfaces for XML</a> are
1042separated from the <a href="html/libxml-htmlparser.html">HTML parser
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1043interfaces</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]1044
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1045<h3><a name="Invoking">Invoking the parser : the pull method</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1046
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1047<p>Usually, the first thing to do is to read an XML input. The parser accepts
1048documents either from in-memory strings or from files. The functions are
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1049defined in "parser.h":</p>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1050<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1051 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseMemory(char *buffer, int size);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1052 <dd><p>Parse a null-terminated string containing the document.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1053 </dd>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1054</dl>
1055<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1056 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseFile(const char *filename);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1057 <dd><p>Parse an XML document contained in a (possibly compressed)
1058 file.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1059 </dd>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1060</dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1061
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1062<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]1063failure).</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1064
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1065<h3 id="Invoking1">Invoking the parser: the push method</h3>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1066
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1067<p>In order for the application to keep the control when the document is
1068being fetched (which is common for GUI based programs) libxml provides a push
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1069interface, too, as of version 1.8.3. Here are the interface functions:</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1070<pre>xmlParserCtxtPtr xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(xmlSAXHandlerPtr sax,
1071 void *user_data,
1072 const char *chunk,
1073 int size,
1074 const char *filename);
1075int xmlParseChunk (xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt,
1076 const char *chunk,
1077 int size,
1078 int terminate);</pre>
1079
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1080<p>and here is a simple example showing how to use the interface:</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1081<pre> FILE *f;
1082
1083 f = fopen(filename, "r");
1084 if (f != NULL) {
1085 int res, size = 1024;
1086 char chars[1024];
1087 xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt;
1088
1089 res = fread(chars, 1, 4, f);
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1090 if (res &gt; 0) {
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1091 ctxt = xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(NULL, NULL,
1092 chars, res, filename);
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1093 while ((res = fread(chars, 1, size, f)) &gt; 0) {
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1094 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, res, 0);
1095 }
1096 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, 0, 1);
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1097 doc = ctxt-&gt;myDoc;
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1098 xmlFreeParserCtxt(ctxt);
1099 }
1100 }</pre>
1101
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1102<p>The HTML parser embedded into libxml also has a push interface; the
1103functions are just prefixed by "html" rather than "xml".</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1104
1105<h3 id="Invoking2">Invoking the parser: the SAX interface</h3>
1106
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1107<p>The tree-building interface makes the parser memory-hungry, first loading
1108the document in memory and then building the tree itself. Reading a document
1109without building the tree is possible using the SAX interfaces (see SAX.h and
1110<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]1111Henstridge's documentation</a>). Note also that the push interface can be
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1112limited to SAX: just use the two first arguments of
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1113<code>xmlCreatePushParserCtxt()</code>.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1114
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1115<h3><a name="Building">Building a tree from scratch</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1116
1117<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]1118there is a set of functions dedicated to building new elements. (These are
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1119also described in &lt;libxml/tree.h&gt;.) For example, here is a piece of
1120code that produces the XML document used in the previous examples:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1121<pre> #include &lt;libxml/tree.h&gt;
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1122 xmlDocPtr doc;
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1123 xmlNodePtr tree, subtree;
1124
1125 doc = xmlNewDoc("1.0");
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1126 doc-&gt;children = xmlNewDocNode(doc, NULL, "EXAMPLE", NULL);
1127 xmlSetProp(doc-&gt;children, "prop1", "gnome is great");
1128 xmlSetProp(doc-&gt;children, "prop2", "&amp; linux too");
1129 tree = xmlNewChild(doc-&gt;children, NULL, "head", NULL);
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1130 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "Welcome to Gnome");
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1131 tree = xmlNewChild(doc-&gt;children, NULL, "chapter", NULL);
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1132 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "The Linux adventure");
1133 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "p", "bla bla bla ...");
1134 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "image", NULL);
1135 xmlSetProp(subtree, "href", "linus.gif");</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1136
1137<p>Not really rocket science ...</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1138
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1139<h3><a name="Traversing">Traversing the tree</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1140
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1141<p>Basically by <a href="html/libxml-tree.html">including "tree.h"</a> your
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1142code has access to the internal structure of all the elements of the tree.
1143The names should be somewhat simple like <strong>parent</strong>,
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1144<strong>children</strong>, <strong>next</strong>, <strong>prev</strong>,
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1145<strong>properties</strong>, etc... For example, still with the previous
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1146example:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1147<pre><code>doc-&gt;children-&gt;children-&gt;children</code></pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1148
1149<p>points to the title element,</p>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1150<pre>doc-&gt;children-&gt;children-&gt;next-&gt;children-&gt;children</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1151
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1152<p>points to the text node containing the chapter title "The Linux
1153adventure".</p>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1154
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]1155<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]1156present before the document root, so <code>doc-&gt;children</code> may point
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1157to an element which is not the document Root Element; a function
Daniel Veillard5cb5ab81999-12-21 15:35:29 +0000[diff] [blame]1158<code>xmlDocGetRootElement()</code> was added for this purpose.</p>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]1159
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1160<h3><a name="Modifying">Modifying the tree</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1161
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1162<p>Functions are provided for reading and writing the document content. Here
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1163is an excerpt from the <a href="html/libxml-tree.html">tree API</a>:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1164<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1165 <dt><code>xmlAttrPtr xmlSetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar *name, const
1166 xmlChar *value);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1167 <dd><p>This sets (or changes) an attribute carried by an ELEMENT node.
1168 The value can be NULL.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1169 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1170</dl>
1171<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1172 <dt><code>const xmlChar *xmlGetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1173 *name);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardc92c3042000-09-29 02:42:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1174 <dd><p>This function returns a pointer to new copy of the property
1175 content. Note that the user must deallocate the result.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1176 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1177</dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1178
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1179<p>Two functions are provided for reading and writing the text associated
1180with elements:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1181<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1182 <dt><code>xmlNodePtr xmlStringGetNodeList(xmlDocPtr doc, const xmlChar
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1183 *value);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1184 <dd><p>This function takes an "external" string and converts it to one
1185 text node or possibly to a list of entity and text nodes. All
1186 non-predefined entity references like &amp;Gnome; will be stored
1187 internally as entity nodes, hence the result of the function may not be
1188 a single node.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1189 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1190</dl>
1191<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1192 <dt><code>xmlChar *xmlNodeListGetString(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNodePtr list, int
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1193 inLine);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1194 <dd><p>This function is the inverse of
1195 <code>xmlStringGetNodeList()</code>. It generates a new string
1196 containing the content of the text and entity nodes. Note the extra
1197 argument inLine. If this argument is set to 1, the function will expand
1198 entity references. For example, instead of returning the &amp;Gnome;
1199 XML encoding in the string, it will substitute it with its value (say,
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1200 "GNU Network Object Model Environment").</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1201 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1202</dl>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1203
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1204<h3><a name="Saving">Saving a tree</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1205
1206<p>Basically 3 options are possible:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1207<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1208 <dt><code>void xmlDocDumpMemory(xmlDocPtr cur, xmlChar**mem, int
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1209 *size);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1210 <dd><p>Returns a buffer into which the document has been saved.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1211 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1212</dl>
1213<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1214 <dt><code>extern void xmlDocDump(FILE *f, xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1215 <dd><p>Dumps a document to an open file descriptor.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1216 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1217</dl>
1218<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1219 <dt><code>int xmlSaveFile(const char *filename, xmlDocPtr cur);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1220 <dd><p>Saves the document to a file. In this case, the compression
1221 interface is triggered if it has been turned on.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1222 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1223</dl>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1224
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1225<h3><a name="Compressio">Compression</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1226
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1227<p>The library transparently handles compression when doing file-based
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1228accesses. The level of compression on saves can be turned on either globally
1229or individually for one file:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1230<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1231 <dt><code>int xmlGetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1232 <dd><p>Gets the document compression ratio (0-9).</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1233 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1234</dl>
1235<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1236 <dt><code>void xmlSetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc, int mode);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1237 <dd><p>Sets the document compression ratio.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1238 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1239</dl>
1240<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1241 <dt><code>int xmlGetCompressMode(void);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1242 <dd><p>Gets the default compression ratio.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1243 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1244</dl>
1245<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1246 <dt><code>void xmlSetCompressMode(int mode);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1247 <dd><p>Sets the default compression ratio.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1248 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1249</dl>
1250
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1251<h2><a name="Entities">Entities or no entities</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1252
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1253<p>Entities in principle are similar to simple C macros. An entity defines an
1254abbreviation for a given string that you can reuse many times throughout the
1255content of your document. Entities are especially useful when a given string
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1256may occur frequently within a document, or to confine the change needed to a
1257document to a restricted area in the internal subset of the document (at the
1258beginning). Example:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1259<pre>1 &lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]12602 &lt;!DOCTYPE EXAMPLE SYSTEM "example.dtd" [
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]12613 &lt;!ENTITY xml "Extensible Markup Language"&gt;
12624 ]&gt;
12635 &lt;EXAMPLE&gt;
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]12646 &amp;xml;
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]12657 &lt;/EXAMPLE&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1266
1267<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]1268its name with '&amp;' and following it by ';' without any spaces added. There
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1269are 5 predefined entities in libxml allowing you to escape charaters with
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1270predefined meaning in some parts of the xml document content:
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1271<strong>&amp;lt;</strong> for the character '&lt;', <strong>&amp;gt;</strong>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1272for the character '&gt;', <strong>&amp;apos;</strong> for the character ''',
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1273<strong>&amp;quot;</strong> for the character '"', and
1274<strong>&amp;amp;</strong> for the character '&amp;'.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1275
1276<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]1277substitute an entity's content so that you can see the replacement text in
1278your application. Or you may prefer to keep entity references as such in the
1279content to be able to save the document back without losing this usually
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1280precious information (if the user went through the pain of explicitly
1281defining entities, he may have a a rather negative attitude if you blindly
1282susbtitute them as saving time). The <a
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1283href="html/libxml-parser.html#XMLSUBSTITUTEENTITIESDEFAULT">xmlSubstituteEntitiesDefault()</a>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1284function allows you to check and change the behaviour, which is to not
1285substitute entities by default.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1286
1287<p>Here is the DOM tree built by libxml for the previous document in the
1288default case:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1289<pre>/gnome/src/gnome-xml -&gt; ./xmllint --debug test/ent1
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1290DOCUMENT
1291version=1.0
1292 ELEMENT EXAMPLE
1293 TEXT
1294 content=
1295 ENTITY_REF
1296 INTERNAL_GENERAL_ENTITY xml
1297 content=Extensible Markup Language
1298 TEXT
1299 content=</pre>
1300
1301<p>And here is the result when substituting entities:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1302<pre>/gnome/src/gnome-xml -&gt; ./tester --debug --noent test/ent1
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1303DOCUMENT
1304version=1.0
1305 ELEMENT EXAMPLE
1306 TEXT
1307 content= Extensible Markup Language</pre>
1308
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1309<p>So, entities or no entities? Basically, it depends on your use case. I
1310suggest that you keep the non-substituting default behaviour and avoid using
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1311entities in your XML document or data if you are not willing to handle the
1312entity references elements in the DOM tree.</p>
1313
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1314<p>Note that at save time libxml enforces the conversion of the predefined
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1315entities where necessary to prevent well-formedness problems, and will also
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1316transparently replace those with chars (i.e. it will not generate entity
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1317reference elements in the DOM tree or call the reference() SAX callback when
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1318finding them in the input).</p>
1319
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1320<p><span style="background-color: #FF0000">WARNING</span>: handling entities
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1321on top of the libxml SAX interface is difficult!!! If you plan to use
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1322non-predefined entities in your documents, then the learning cuvre to handle
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1323then 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]1324strongly suggest you consider using the DOM interface instead and let libxml
Daniel Veillard8c6d6af2000-08-25 17:14:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1325deal with the complexity rather than trying to do it yourself.</p>
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1326
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1327<h2><a name="Namespaces">Namespaces</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1328
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1329<p>The libxml library implements <a
1330href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/">XML namespaces</a> support by
1331recognizing namespace contructs in the input, and does namespace lookup
1332automatically when building the DOM tree. A namespace declaration is
1333associated with an in-memory structure and all elements or attributes within
1334that namespace point to it. Hence testing the namespace is a simple and fast
1335equality operation at the user level.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1336
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1337<p>I suggest that people using libxml use a namespace, and declare it in the
1338root element of their document as the default namespace. Then they don't need
1339to 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]1340refinement and merging of data from different sources. This doesn't increase
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1341the size of the XML output significantly, but significantly increases its
1342value in the long-term. Example:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1343<pre>&lt;mydoc xmlns="http://mydoc.example.org/schemas/"&gt;
1344 &lt;elem1&gt;...&lt;/elem1&gt;
1345 &lt;elem2&gt;...&lt;/elem2&gt;
1346&lt;/mydoc&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1347
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1348<p>The namespace value has to be an absolute URL, but the URL doesn't have to
1349point to any existing resource on the Web. It will bind all the element and
1350atributes with that URL. I suggest to use an URL within a domain you control,
1351and that the URL should contain some kind of version information if possible.
1352For example, <code>"http://www.gnome.org/gnumeric/1.0/"</code> is a good
1353namespace scheme.</p>
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1354
1355<p>Then when you load a file, make sure that a namespace carrying the
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1356version-independent prefix is installed on the root element of your document,
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1357and if the version information don't match something you know, warn the user
1358and 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]1359namespace checking on the prefix value. &lt;foo:text&gt; may be exactly the
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1360same as &lt;bar:text&gt; in another document. What really matters is the URI
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1361associated with the element or the attribute, not the prefix string (which is
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1362just a shortcut for the full URI). In libxml, element and attributes have an
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1363<code>ns</code> field pointing to an xmlNs structure detailing the namespace
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1364prefix and its URI.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1365
1366<p>@@Interfaces@@</p>
1367
1368<p>@@Examples@@</p>
1369
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1370<p>Usually people object to using namespaces together with validity checking.
1371I will try to make sure that using namespaces won't break validity checking,
1372so even if you plan to use or currently are using validation I strongly
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1373suggest adding namespaces to your document. A default namespace scheme
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1374<code>xmlns="http://...."</code> should not break validity even on less
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1375flexible parsers. Using namespaces to mix and differentiate content coming
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1376from multiple DTDs will certainly break current validation schemes. I will
1377try to provide ways to do this, but this may not be portable or
1378standardized.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1379
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1380<h2><a name="Validation">Validation, or are you afraid of DTDs ?</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1381
1382<p>Well what is validation and what is a DTD ?</p>
1383
1384<p>Validation is the process of checking a document against a set of
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1385construction rules; a <strong>DTD</strong> (Document Type Definition) is such
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1386a set of rules.</p>
1387
1388<p>The validation process and building DTDs are the two most difficult parts
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1389of the XML life cycle. Briefly a DTD defines all the possibles element to be
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1390found within your document, what is the formal shape of your document tree
1391(by defining the allowed content of an element, either text, a regular
1392expression for the allowed list of children, or mixed content i.e. both text
1393and children). The DTD also defines the allowed attributes for all elements
1394and the types of the attributes. For more detailed information, I suggest
1395that you read the related parts of the XML specification, the examples found
1396under gnome-xml/test/valid/dtd and any of the large number of books available
1397on XML. The dia example in gnome-xml/test/valid should be both simple and
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1398complete enough to allow you to build your own.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1399
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1400<p>A word of warning, building a good DTD which will fit the needs of your
1401application in the long-term is far from trivial; however, the extra level of
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1402quality it can ensure is well worth the price for some sets of applications
1403or if you already have already a DTD defined for your application field.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1404
1405<p>The validation is not completely finished but in a (very IMHO) usable
1406state. Until a real validation interface is defined the way to do it is to
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1407define and set the <strong>xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue</strong>
1408external variable to 1, this will of course be changed at some point:</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1409
1410<p>extern int xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue;</p>
1411
1412<p>...</p>
1413
1414<p>xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue = 1;</p>
1415
1416<p></p>
1417
1418<p>To handle external entities, use the function
1419<strong>xmlSetExternalEntityLoader</strong>(xmlExternalEntityLoader f); to
1420link in you HTTP/FTP/Entities database library to the standard libxml
1421core.</p>
1422
1423<p>@@interfaces@@</p>
1424
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]1425<h2><a name="DOM"></a><a name="Principles">DOM Principles</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1426
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1427<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/DOM/">DOM</a> stands for the <em>Document
1428Object Model</em>; this is an API for accessing XML or HTML structured
1429documents. Native support for DOM in Gnome is on the way (module gnome-dom),
1430and will be based on gnome-xml. This will be a far cleaner interface to
1431manipulate XML files within Gnome since it won't expose the internal
1432structure.</p>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1433
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1434<p>The current DOM implementation on top of libxml is the <a
Daniel Veillarda47fb3d2001-03-25 17:23:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1435href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gdome2/">gdome2 Gnome module</a>, this
1436is a full DOM interface, thanks to Paolo Casarini, check the <a
1437href="http://www.cs.unibo.it/~casarini/gdome2/">Gdome2 homepage</a> for more
1438informations.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1439
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]1440<h2><a name="Example"></a><a name="real">A real example</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1441
1442<p>Here is a real size example, where the actual content of the application
1443data 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]1444a proposal to keep a database of jobs related to Gnome, with an XML based
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1445storage structure. Here is an <a href="gjobs.xml">XML encoded jobs
1446base</a>:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1447<pre>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
1448&lt;gjob:Helping xmlns:gjob="http://www.gnome.org/some-location"&gt;
1449 &lt;gjob:Jobs&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1450
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1451 &lt;gjob:Job&gt;
1452 &lt;gjob:Project ID="3"/&gt;
1453 &lt;gjob:Application&gt;GBackup&lt;/gjob:Application&gt;
1454 &lt;gjob:Category&gt;Development&lt;/gjob:Category&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1455
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1456 &lt;gjob:Update&gt;
1457 &lt;gjob:Status&gt;Open&lt;/gjob:Status&gt;
1458 &lt;gjob:Modified&gt;Mon, 07 Jun 1999 20:27:45 -0400 MET DST&lt;/gjob:Modified&gt;
1459 &lt;gjob:Salary&gt;USD 0.00&lt;/gjob:Salary&gt;
1460 &lt;/gjob:Update&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1461
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1462 &lt;gjob:Developers&gt;
1463 &lt;gjob:Developer&gt;
1464 &lt;/gjob:Developer&gt;
1465 &lt;/gjob:Developers&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1466
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1467 &lt;gjob:Contact&gt;
1468 &lt;gjob:Person&gt;Nathan Clemons&lt;/gjob:Person&gt;
1469 &lt;gjob:Email&gt;nathan@windsofstorm.net&lt;/gjob:Email&gt;
1470 &lt;gjob:Company&gt;
1471 &lt;/gjob:Company&gt;
1472 &lt;gjob:Organisation&gt;
1473 &lt;/gjob:Organisation&gt;
1474 &lt;gjob:Webpage&gt;
1475 &lt;/gjob:Webpage&gt;
1476 &lt;gjob:Snailmail&gt;
1477 &lt;/gjob:Snailmail&gt;
1478 &lt;gjob:Phone&gt;
1479 &lt;/gjob:Phone&gt;
1480 &lt;/gjob:Contact&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1481
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1482 &lt;gjob:Requirements&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1483 The program should be released as free software, under the GPL.
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1484 &lt;/gjob:Requirements&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1485
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1486 &lt;gjob:Skills&gt;
1487 &lt;/gjob:Skills&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1488
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1489 &lt;gjob:Details&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1490 A GNOME based system that will allow a superuser to configure
1491 compressed and uncompressed files and/or file systems to be backed
1492 up with a supported media in the system. This should be able to
1493 perform via find commands generating a list of files that are passed
1494 to tar, dd, cpio, cp, gzip, etc., to be directed to the tape machine
1495 or via operations performed on the filesystem itself. Email
1496 notification and GUI status display very important.
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1497 &lt;/gjob:Details&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1498
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1499 &lt;/gjob:Job&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:Jobs&gt;
1502&lt;/gjob:Helping&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1503
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1504<p>While loading the XML file into an internal DOM tree is a matter of
1505calling only a couple of functions, browsing the tree to gather the ata and
1506generate the internal structures is harder, and more error prone.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1507
1508<p>The suggested principle is to be tolerant with respect to the input
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1509structure. For example, the ordering of the attributes is not significant,
1510the 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]1511depend on the order of the children of a given node, unless it really makes
1512things harder. Here is some code to parse the information for a person:</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1513<pre>/*
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1514 * A person record
1515 */
1516typedef struct person {
1517 char *name;
1518 char *email;
1519 char *company;
1520 char *organisation;
1521 char *smail;
1522 char *webPage;
1523 char *phone;
1524} person, *personPtr;
1525
1526/*
1527 * And the code needed to parse it
1528 */
1529personPtr parsePerson(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) {
1530 personPtr ret = NULL;
1531
1532DEBUG("parsePerson\n");
1533 /*
1534 * allocate the struct
1535 */
1536 ret = (personPtr) malloc(sizeof(person));
1537 if (ret == NULL) {
1538 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n");
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1539 return(NULL);
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1540 }
1541 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(person));
1542
1543 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1544 cur = cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1545 while (cur != NULL) {
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1546 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Person")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1547 ret-&gt;name = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1548 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Email")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1549 ret-&gt;email = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1550 cur = cur-&gt;next;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1551 }
1552
1553 return(ret);
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1554}</pre>
1555
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1556<p>Here are a couple of things to notice:</p>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1557<ul>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1558 <li>Usually a recursive parsing style is the more convenient one: XML data
1559 is by nature subject to repetitive constructs and usually exibits highly
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1560 stuctured patterns.</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1561 <li>The two arguments of type <em>xmlDocPtr</em> and <em>xmlNsPtr</em>,
1562 i.e. the pointer to the global XML document and the namespace reserved to
1563 the application. Document wide information are needed for example to
1564 decode entities and it's a good coding practice to define a namespace for
1565 your application set of data and test that the element and attributes
1566 you're analyzing actually pertains to your application space. This is
1567 done by a simple equality test (cur-&gt;ns == ns).</li>
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1568 <li>To retrieve text and attributes value, you can use the function
1569 <em>xmlNodeListGetString</em> to gather all the text and entity reference
1570 nodes generated by the DOM output and produce an single text string.</li>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1571</ul>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1572
1573<p>Here is another piece of code used to parse another level of the
1574structure:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1575<pre>#include &lt;libxml/tree.h&gt;
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1576/*
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1577 * a Description for a Job
1578 */
1579typedef struct job {
1580 char *projectID;
1581 char *application;
1582 char *category;
1583 personPtr contact;
1584 int nbDevelopers;
1585 personPtr developers[100]; /* using dynamic alloc is left as an exercise */
1586} job, *jobPtr;
1587
1588/*
1589 * And the code needed to parse it
1590 */
1591jobPtr parseJob(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) {
1592 jobPtr ret = NULL;
1593
1594DEBUG("parseJob\n");
1595 /*
1596 * allocate the struct
1597 */
1598 ret = (jobPtr) malloc(sizeof(job));
1599 if (ret == NULL) {
1600 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n");
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1601 return(NULL);
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1602 }
1603 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(job));
1604
1605 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1606 cur = cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1607 while (cur != NULL) {
1608
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1609 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Project")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns)) {
1610 ret-&gt;projectID = xmlGetProp(cur, "ID");
1611 if (ret-&gt;projectID == NULL) {
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1612 fprintf(stderr, "Project has no ID\n");
1613 }
1614 }
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1615 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Application")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1616 ret-&gt;application = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1617 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Category")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1618 ret-&gt;category = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1619 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Contact")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1620 ret-&gt;contact = parsePerson(doc, ns, cur);
1621 cur = cur-&gt;next;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1622 }
1623
1624 return(ret);
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1625}</pre>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1626
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1627<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]1628boring. Ultimately, it could be possble to write stubbers taking either C
1629data structure definitions, a set of XML examples or an XML DTD and produce
1630the code needed to import and export the content between C data and XML
1631storage. This is left as an exercise to the reader :-)</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1632
Daniel Veillard6f0adb52000-07-03 11:41:26 +0000[diff] [blame]1633<p>Feel free to use <a href="example/gjobread.c">the code for the full C
1634parsing example</a> as a template, it is also available with Makefile in the
1635Gnome CVS base under gnome-xml/example</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1636
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1637<h2><a name="Contributi">Contributions</a></h2>
1638<ul>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1639 <li><a href="mailto:ari@lusis.org">Ari Johnson</a>
1640 provides a C++ wrapper for libxml:
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1641 <p>Website: <a
1642 href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/</a></p>
1643 <p>Download: <a
1644 href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/libxml++.tar.gz">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/libxml++.tar.gz</a></p>
1645 </li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1646 <li><a href="mailto:izlatkovic@daenet.de">Igor Zlatkovic</a>
1647 is now the maintainer of the Windows port, <a
Daniel Veillard95189532001-07-26 18:30:26 +0000[diff] [blame]1648 href="http://www.fh-frankfurt.de/~igor/projects/libxml/index.html">he
1649 provides binaries</a></li>
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1650 <li><a
1651 href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2001-March/msg00014.html">Matt
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1652 Sergeant</a>
1653 developped <a href="http://axkit.org/download/">XML::LibXSLT</a>, a perl
1654 wrapper for libxml2/libxslt as part of the <a
1655 href="http://axkit.com/">AxKit XML application server</a></li>
1656 <li><a href="mailto:fnatter@gmx.net">Felix Natter</a>
1657 and <a href="mailto:geertk@ai.rug.nl">Geert Kloosterman</a> provide <a
Daniel Veillardca989762001-06-23 17:39:29 +0000[diff] [blame]1658 href="libxml-doc.el">an emacs module</a> to lookup libxml(2) functions
Daniel Veillard3f6f7f62000-06-30 17:58:25 +0000[diff] [blame]1659 documentation</li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1660 <li><a href="mailto:sherwin@nlm.nih.gov">Ziying Sherwin</a>
1661 provided <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages/0488.html">man
1662 pages</a></li>
Daniel Veillard5168dbf2001-07-07 00:18:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1663 <li>there is a module for <a
1664 href="http://acs-misc.sourceforge.net/nsxml.html">libxml/libxslt support
1665 in OpenNSD/AOLServer</a></li>
Daniel Veillard3d6ae1c2001-08-15 13:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1666 <li><a href="mailto:dkuhlman@cutter.rexx.com">Dave Kuhlman</a>
1667 provides libxml/libxslt <a href="http://www.rexx.com/~dkuhlman">wrappers
1668 for Python</a></li>
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1669</ul>
1670
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1671<p></p>
1672
Daniel Veillardf7ed3362001-08-17 12:01:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1673<p><a href="mailto:daniel@veillard.com">Daniel Veillard</a></p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1674
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000[diff] [blame^]1675<p>$Id: xml.html,v 1.106 2001/08/17 12:01:21 veillard Exp $</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1676</body>
1677</html>