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14<title>FAQ</title>
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Daniel Veillard8f40f1e2002-08-28 21:18:45 +0000[diff] [blame]19<a href="http://www.gnome.org/"><img src="gnome2.png" alt="Gnome2 Logo"></a><a href="http://www.w3.org/Status"><img src="w3c.png" alt="W3C Logo"></a><a href="http://www.redhat.com/"><img src="redhat.gif" alt="Red Hat Logo"></a><div align="left"><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/"><img src="Libxml2-Logo-180x168.gif" alt="Made with Libxml2 Logo"></a></div>
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22<h1>The XML C library for Gnome</h1>
23<h2>FAQ</h2>
24</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td>
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29<tr><td colspan="1" bgcolor="#eecfa1" align="center"><center><b>Main Menu</b></center></td></tr>
Daniel Veillard8acca112002-01-21 09:52:27 +0000[diff] [blame]30<tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd"><ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]31<li><a href="index.html">Home</a></li>
32<li><a href="intro.html">Introduction</a></li>
33<li><a href="FAQ.html">FAQ</a></li>
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35<li><a href="bugs.html">Reporting bugs and getting help</a></li>
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Daniel Veillard7b602b42002-01-08 13:26:00 +0000[diff] [blame]39<li><a href="XMLinfo.html">XML</a></li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]40<li><a href="XSLT.html">XSLT</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6dbcaf82002-02-20 14:37:47 +0000[diff] [blame]41<li><a href="python.html">Python and bindings</a></li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]42<li><a href="architecture.html">libxml architecture</a></li>
43<li><a href="tree.html">The tree output</a></li>
44<li><a href="interface.html">The SAX interface</a></li>
45<li><a href="xmldtd.html">Validation &amp; DTDs</a></li>
46<li><a href="xmlmem.html">Memory Management</a></li>
47<li><a href="encoding.html">Encodings support</a></li>
48<li><a href="xmlio.html">I/O Interfaces</a></li>
49<li><a href="catalog.html">Catalog support</a></li>
50<li><a href="library.html">The parser interfaces</a></li>
51<li><a href="entities.html">Entities or no entities</a></li>
52<li><a href="namespaces.html">Namespaces</a></li>
53<li><a href="upgrade.html">Upgrading 1.x code</a></li>
Daniel Veillard52dcab32001-10-30 12:51:17 +0000[diff] [blame]54<li><a href="threads.html">Thread safety</a></li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]55<li><a href="DOM.html">DOM Principles</a></li>
56<li><a href="example.html">A real example</a></li>
57<li><a href="contribs.html">Contributions</a></li>
Daniel Veillardfc59c092002-06-05 14:48:26 +0000[diff] [blame]58<li><a href="tutorial/index.html">Tutorial</a></li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]59<li>
60<a href="xml.html">flat page</a>, <a href="site.xsl">stylesheet</a>
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Daniel Veillard3bf65be2002-01-23 12:36:34 +0000[diff] [blame]65<tr><td colspan="1" bgcolor="#eecfa1" align="center"><center><b>API Indexes</b></center></td></tr>
Daniel Veillard5ede35e2002-10-01 11:37:35 +0000[diff] [blame]66<tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd">
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70<ul>
Daniel Veillardf8592562002-01-23 17:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]71<li><a href="APIchunk0.html">Alphabetic</a></li>
Daniel Veillard3bf65be2002-01-23 12:36:34 +0000[diff] [blame]72<li><a href="APIconstructors.html">Constructors</a></li>
73<li><a href="APIfunctions.html">Functions/Types</a></li>
74<li><a href="APIfiles.html">Modules</a></li>
75<li><a href="APIsymbols.html">Symbols</a></li>
Daniel Veillard5ede35e2002-10-01 11:37:35 +0000[diff] [blame]76</ul>
77</td></tr>
Daniel Veillard3bf65be2002-01-23 12:36:34 +0000[diff] [blame]78</table>
79<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3">
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]80<tr><td colspan="1" bgcolor="#eecfa1" align="center"><center><b>Related links</b></center></td></tr>
Daniel Veillard8acca112002-01-21 09:52:27 +0000[diff] [blame]81<tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd"><ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]82<li><a href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/">Mail archive</a></li>
83<li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/">XSLT libxslt</a></li>
Daniel Veillard4a859202002-01-08 11:49:22 +0000[diff] [blame]84<li><a href="http://phd.cs.unibo.it/gdome2/">DOM gdome2</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2d347fa2002-03-17 10:34:11 +0000[diff] [blame]85<li><a href="http://www.aleksey.com/xmlsec/">XML-DSig xmlsec</a></li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]86<li><a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">FTP</a></li>
87<li><a href="http://www.fh-frankfurt.de/~igor/projects/libxml/">Windows binaries</a></li>
Daniel Veillarddb9dfd92001-11-26 17:25:02 +0000[diff] [blame]88<li><a href="http://garypennington.net/libxml2/">Solaris binaries</a></li>
Daniel Veillardcb7543b2002-09-09 10:54:06 +0000[diff] [blame]89<li><a href="http://www.zveno.com/open_source/libxml2xslt.html">MacOsX binaries</a></li>
Daniel Veillarde6d8e202002-05-02 06:11:10 +0000[diff] [blame]90<li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/libxml2-pas/">Pascal bindings</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2d347fa2002-03-17 10:34:11 +0000[diff] [blame]91<li><a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml&amp;product=libxml2">Bug Tracker</a></li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]92</ul></td></tr>
93</table>
94</td></tr></table></td>
95<td valign="top" bgcolor="#8b7765"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%"><tr><td><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%" bgcolor="#000000"><tr><td><table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" width="100%"><tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd">
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]96<p>Table of Contents:</p>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]97<ul>
Daniel Veillard63d83142002-05-20 06:51:05 +0000[diff] [blame]98<li><a href="FAQ.html#License">License(s)</a></li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]99 <li><a href="FAQ.html#Installati">Installation</a></li>
100 <li><a href="FAQ.html#Compilatio">Compilation</a></li>
101 <li><a href="FAQ.html#Developer">Developer corner</a></li>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]102</ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]103<h3>
Daniel Veillard63d83142002-05-20 06:51:05 +0000[diff] [blame]104<a name="License">License</a>(s)</h3>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]105<ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]106<li>
107<em>Licensing Terms for libxml</em>
Daniel Veillardc575b992002-02-08 13:28:40 +0000[diff] [blame]108 <p>libxml is released under the <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html">MIT
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]109 License</a>; see the file Copyright in the distribution for the precise
Daniel Veillardc575b992002-02-08 13:28:40 +0000[diff] [blame]110 wording</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]111 </li>
112 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]113<em>Can I embed libxml in a proprietary application ?</em>
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000[diff] [blame]114 <p>Yes. The MIT License allows you to keep proprietary the changes you
115 made to libxml, but it would be graceful to send-back bug fixes and
116 improvements as patches for possible incorporation in the main
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]117 development tree.</p>
118 </li>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]119</ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]120<h3><a name="Installati">Installation</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]121<ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]122<li>Unless you are forced to because your application links with a Gnome
Daniel Veillarde0c1d722001-03-21 10:28:36 +0000[diff] [blame]123 library requiring it, <strong><span style="background-color: #FF0000">Do
124 Not Use libxml1</span></strong>, use libxml2</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]125 <li>
Daniel Veillardaf43f632002-03-08 15:05:20 +0000[diff] [blame]126<em>Where can I get libxml</em> ?
Daniel Veillardb7c29c32002-09-25 22:44:43 +0000[diff] [blame]127 <p>The original distribution comes from <a href="ftp://rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/">rpmfind.net</a> or <a href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/libxml2/2.4/">gnome.org</a>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]128</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]129 <p>Most Linux and BSD distributions include libxml, this is probably the
130 safer way for end-users to use libxml.</p>
131 <p>David Doolin provides precompiled Windows versions at <a href="http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~doolin/code/libxmlwin32/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20">http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~doolin/code/libxmlwin32/</a>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]132</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]133 </li>
134 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]135<em>I see libxml and libxml2 releases, which one should I install ?</em>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]136 <ul>
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000[diff] [blame]137<li>If you are not constrained by backward compatibility issues with
138 existing applications, install libxml2 only</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]139 <li>If you are not doing development, you can safely install both.
140 Usually the packages <a href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml.html">libxml</a> and <a href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2.html">libxml2</a> are
141 compatible (this is not the case for development packages).</li>
142 <li>If you are a developer and your system provides separate packaging
Daniel Veillard008186f2001-09-13 14:24:44 +0000[diff] [blame]143 for shared libraries and the development components, it is possible
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]144 to install libxml and libxml2, and also <a href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml-devel.html">libxml-devel</a>
145 and <a href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2-devel.html">libxml2-devel</a>
Daniel Veillard480363b2001-03-16 22:04:15 +0000[diff] [blame]146 too for libxml2 &gt;= 2.3.0</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]147 <li>If you are developing a new application, please develop against
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]148 libxml2(-devel)</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]149 </ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]150</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]151 <li>
152<em>I can't install the libxml package, it conflicts with libxml0</em>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]153 <p>You probably have an old libxml0 package used to provide the shared
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000[diff] [blame]154 library for libxml.so.0, you can probably safely remove it. The libxml
155 packages provided on <a href="ftp://rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/">rpmfind.net</a> provide
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]156 libxml.so.0</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]157 </li>
158 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]159<em>I can't install the libxml(2) RPM package due to failed
Daniel Veillard63d83142002-05-20 06:51:05 +0000[diff] [blame]160 dependencies</em>
161 <p>The most generic solution is to re-fetch the latest src.rpm , and
Daniel Veillardc654d602001-05-01 12:42:26 +0000[diff] [blame]162 rebuild it locally with</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]163 <p>
164<code>rpm --rebuild libxml(2)-xxx.src.rpm</code>.</p>
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000[diff] [blame]165 <p>If everything goes well it will generate two binary rpm packages (one
166 providing the shared libs and xmllint, and the other one, the -devel
167 package, providing includes, static libraries and scripts needed to build
Daniel Veillardc654d602001-05-01 12:42:26 +0000[diff] [blame]168 applications with libxml(2)) that you can install locally.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]169 </li>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]170</ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]171<h3><a name="Compilatio">Compilation</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]172<ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]173<li>
174<em>What is the process to compile libxml ?</em>
Daniel Veillard21473672002-06-17 07:29:22 +0000[diff] [blame]175 <p>As most UNIX libraries libxml follows the &quot;standard&quot;:</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]176 <p><code>gunzip -c xxx.tar.gz | tar xvf -</code></p>
177 <p><code>cd libxml-xxxx</code></p>
178 <p><code>./configure --help</code></p>
179 <p>to see the options, then the compilation/installation proper</p>
180 <p><code>./configure [possible options]</code></p>
181 <p><code>make</code></p>
182 <p><code>make install</code></p>
183 <p>At that point you may have to rerun ldconfig or a similar utility to
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]184 update your list of installed shared libs.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]185 </li>
186 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]187<em>What other libraries are needed to compile/install libxml ?</em>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]188 <p>Libxml does not require any other library, the normal C ANSI API
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]189 should be sufficient (please report any violation to this rule you may
190 find).</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]191 <p>However if found at configuration time libxml will detect and use the
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]192 following libs:</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]193 <ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]194<li>
Daniel Veillardaf43f632002-03-08 15:05:20 +0000[diff] [blame]195<a href="http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/zlib/">libz</a> : a
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]196 highly portable and available widely compression library.</li>
197 <li>iconv: a powerful character encoding conversion library. It is
198 included by default in recent glibc libraries, so it doesn't need to
199 be installed specifically on Linux. It now seems a <a href="http://www.opennc.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xsh/iconv.html">part
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]200 of the official UNIX</a> specification. Here is one <a href="http://clisp.cons.org/~haible/packages-libiconv.html">implementation
201 of the library</a> which source can be found <a href="ftp://ftp.ilog.fr/pub/Users/haible/gnu/">here</a>.</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]202 </ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]203</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]204 <li>
205<em>Make check fails on some platforms</em>
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000[diff] [blame]206 <p>Sometimes the regression tests' results don't completely match the
207 value produced by the parser, and the makefile uses diff to print the
208 delta. On some platforms the diff return breaks the compilation process;
209 if the diff is small this is probably not a serious problem.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]210 <p>Sometimes (especially on Solaris) make checks fail due to limitations
Daniel Veillarde46182c2002-02-12 14:29:11 +0000[diff] [blame]211 in make. Try using GNU-make instead.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]212 </li>
213 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]214<em>I use the CVS version and there is no configure script</em>
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000[diff] [blame]215 <p>The configure script (and other Makefiles) are generated. Use the
216 autogen.sh script to regenerate the configure script and Makefiles,
217 like:</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]218 <p><code>./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --disable-shared</code></p>
219 </li>
220 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]221<em>I have troubles when running make tests with gcc-3.0</em>
Daniel Veillard7b06bcb2001-06-22 16:03:51 +0000[diff] [blame]222 <p>It seems the initial release of gcc-3.0 has a problem with the
223 optimizer which miscompiles the URI module. Please use another
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]224 compiler.</p>
225 </li>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]226</ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]227<h3>
228<a name="Developer">Developer</a> corner</h3>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]229<ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]230<li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]231<em>xmlDocDump() generates output on one line.</em>
232 <p>Libxml will not <strong>invent</strong> spaces in the content of a
Daniel Veillard008186f2001-09-13 14:24:44 +0000[diff] [blame]233 document since <strong>all spaces in the content of a document are
234 significant</strong>. If you build a tree from the API and want
235 indentation:</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]236 <ol>
237<li>the correct way is to generate those yourself too.</li>
238 <li>the dangerous way is to ask libxml to add those blanks to your
Daniel Veillard008186f2001-09-13 14:24:44 +0000[diff] [blame]239 content <strong>modifying the content of your document in the
240 process</strong>. The result may not be what you expect. There is
241 <strong>NO</strong> way to guarantee that such a modification won't
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]242 affect other parts of the content of your document. See <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-parser.html#XMLKEEPBLANKSDEFAULT">xmlKeepBlanksDefault
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]243 ()</a> and <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLSAVEFORMATFILE">xmlSaveFormatFile
244 ()</a>
245</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]246 </ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]247</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]248 <li>Extra nodes in the document:
Daniel Veillard62bccd52001-02-10 09:40:10 +0000[diff] [blame]249 <p><em>For a XML file as below:</em></p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]250 <pre>&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt;
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]251&lt;PLAN xmlns=&quot;http://www.argus.ca/autotest/1.0/&quot;&gt;
252&lt;NODE CommFlag=&quot;0&quot;/&gt;
253&lt;NODE CommFlag=&quot;1&quot;/&gt;
Daniel Veillard62bccd52001-02-10 09:40:10 +0000[diff] [blame]254&lt;/PLAN&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]255 <p><em>after parsing it with the function
Daniel Veillard480363b2001-03-16 22:04:15 +0000[diff] [blame]256 pxmlDoc=xmlParseFile(...);</em></p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]257 <p><em>I want to the get the content of the first node (node with the
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]258 CommFlag=&quot;0&quot;)</em></p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]259 <p><em>so I did it as following;</em></p>
260 <pre>xmlNodePtr pnode;
Daniel Veillard62bccd52001-02-10 09:40:10 +0000[diff] [blame]261pnode=pxmlDoc-&gt;children-&gt;children;</pre>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]262 <p><em>but it does not work. If I change it to</em></p>
263 <pre>pnode=pxmlDoc-&gt;children-&gt;children-&gt;next;</pre>
264 <p><em>then it works. Can someone explain it to me.</em></p>
265 <p>
266 <p>In XML all characters in the content of the document are significant
Daniel Veillard7f41b3e2001-02-10 09:35:37 +0000[diff] [blame]267 <strong>including blanks and formatting line breaks</strong>.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]268 <p>The extra nodes you are wondering about are just that, text nodes with
Daniel Veillard63d83142002-05-20 06:51:05 +0000[diff] [blame]269 the formatting spaces which are part of the document but that people tend
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]270 to forget. There is a function <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-parser.html">xmlKeepBlanksDefault
Daniel Veillard7f41b3e2001-02-10 09:35:37 +0000[diff] [blame]271 ()</a> to remove those at parse time, but that's an heuristic, and its
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]272 use should be limited to cases where you are certain there is no
Daniel Veillard008186f2001-09-13 14:24:44 +0000[diff] [blame]273 mixed-content in the document.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]274 </li>
275 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]276<em>I get compilation errors of existing code like when accessing
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]277 <strong>root</strong> or <strong>child fields</strong> of nodes.</em>
Daniel Veillard3f3b4f32001-03-13 15:12:39 +0000[diff] [blame]278 <p>You are compiling code developed for libxml version 1 and using a
279 libxml2 development environment. Either switch back to libxml v1 devel or
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]280 even better fix the code to compile with libxml2 (or both) by <a href="upgrade.html">following the instructions</a>.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]281 </li>
282 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]283<em>I get compilation errors about non existing
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]284 <strong>xmlRootNode</strong> or <strong>xmlChildrenNode</strong>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]285 fields.</em>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]286 <p>The source code you are using has been <a href="upgrade.html">upgraded</a> to be able to compile with both libxml
Daniel Veillard008186f2001-09-13 14:24:44 +0000[diff] [blame]287 and libxml2, but you need to install a more recent version:
288 libxml(-devel) &gt;= 1.8.8 or libxml2(-devel) &gt;= 2.1.0</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]289 </li>
290 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]291<em>XPath implementation looks seriously broken</em>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]292 <p>XPath implementation prior to 2.3.0 was really incomplete. Upgrade to
293 a recent version, there are no known bugs in the current version.</p>
294 </li>
295 <li>
296<em>The example provided in the web page does not compile.</em>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]297 <p>It's hard to maintain the documentation in sync with the code
Daniel Veillarde9202a02000-10-16 16:58:19 +0000[diff] [blame]298 &lt;grin/&gt; ...</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]299 <p>Check the previous points 1/ and 2/ raised before, and please send
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]300 patches.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]301 </li>
302 <li>
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000[diff] [blame]303<em>Where can I get more examples and information than privoded on the
304 web page?</em>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]305 <p>Ideally a libxml book would be nice. I have no such plan ... But you
306 can:</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]307 <ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]308<li>check more deeply the <a href="html/libxml-lib.html">existing
309 generated doc</a>
310</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]311 <li>look for examples of use for libxml function using the Gnome code.
312 For example the following will query the full Gnome CVS base for the
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]313 use of the <strong>xmlAddChild()</strong> function:
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]314 <p><a href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/search?string=xmlAddChild">http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/search?string=xmlAddChild</a></p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]315 <p>This may be slow, a large hardware donation to the gnome project
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]316 could cure this :-)</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]317 </li>
318 <li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]319<a href="http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&amp;dir=gnome-xml">Browse
Daniel Veillardaf43f632002-03-08 15:05:20 +0000[diff] [blame]320 the libxml source</a> , I try to write code as clean and documented
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000[diff] [blame]321 as possible, so looking at it may be helpful. In particular the code
322 of xmllint.c and of the various testXXX.c test programs should
323 provide good examples of how to do things with the library.</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]324 </ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]325</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]326 <li>What about C++ ?
Daniel Veillard008186f2001-09-13 14:24:44 +0000[diff] [blame]327 <p>libxml is written in pure C in order to allow easy reuse on a number
328 of platforms, including embedded systems. I don't intend to convert to
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]329 C++.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]330 <p>There are however a few C++ wrappers which may fulfill your needs:</p>
331 <ul>
Daniel Veillard9b6fd302002-05-13 12:06:47 +0000[diff] [blame]332<li>by Ari Johnson &lt;ari@btigate.com&gt;:
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]333 <p>Website: <a href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml%2B%2B/">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/</a>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]334</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]335 <p>Download: <a href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml%2B%2B/libxml%2B%2B.tar.gz">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/libxml++.tar.gz</a>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]336</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]337 </li>
338 <li>by Peter Jones &lt;pjones@pmade.org&gt;
Daniel Veillard9b6fd302002-05-13 12:06:47 +0000[diff] [blame]339 <p>Website: <a href="http://pmade.org/pjones/software/xmlwrapp/">http://pmade.org/pjones/software/xmlwrapp/</a>
340</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]341 </li>
342 </ul>
Daniel Veillard9b6fd302002-05-13 12:06:47 +0000[diff] [blame]343</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]344 <li>How to validate a document a posteriori ?
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]345 <p>It is possible to validate documents which had not been validated at
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000[diff] [blame]346 initial parsing time or documents which have been built from scratch
347 using the API. Use the <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-valid.html#XMLVALIDATEDTD">xmlValidateDtd()</a>
Daniel Veillard63d83142002-05-20 06:51:05 +0000[diff] [blame]348 function. It is also possible to simply add a DTD to an existing
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]349 document:</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]350 <pre>xmlDocPtr doc; /* your existing document */
351xmlDtdPtr dtd = xmlParseDTD(NULL, filename_of_dtd); /* parse the DTD */
352
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]353 dtd-&gt;name = xmlStrDup((xmlChar*)&quot;root_name&quot;); /* use the given root */
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]354
Daniel Veillarde9202a02000-10-16 16:58:19 +0000[diff] [blame]355 doc-&gt;intSubset = dtd;
356 if (doc-&gt;children == NULL) xmlAddChild((xmlNodePtr)doc, (xmlNodePtr)dtd);
357 else xmlAddPrevSibling(doc-&gt;children, (xmlNodePtr)dtd);
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]358 </pre>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]359 </li>
John Fleck61f6fb62002-10-31 15:23:29 +0000[diff] [blame^]360 <li>So what is this funky &quot;xmlChar&quot; used all the time?
361 <p>It is a null terminated sequence of utf-8 characters. And only utf-8! You
362 need to convert strings encoded in different ways to utf-8 before passing
363 them to the API. This can be accomplished with the iconv library for
364 instance.</p>
365 </li>
366
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000[diff] [blame]367 <li>etc ...</li>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]368</ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]369<p>
Daniel Veillard3f4c40f2002-02-13 09:19:28 +0000[diff] [blame]370<p><a href="bugs.html">Daniel Veillard</a></p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000[diff] [blame]371</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td>
372</tr></table></td></tr></table>
Daniel Veillardaf743792000-07-01 11:49:28 +0000[diff] [blame]373</body>
374</html>