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14<title>I/O Interfaces</title>
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Daniel Veillard8f40f1e2002-08-28 21:18:45 +000019<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>I/O Interfaces</h2>
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Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +000091<p>Table of Content:</p>
92<ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +000093<li><a href="#General1">General overview</a></li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +000094 <li><a href="#basic">The basic buffer type</a></li>
95 <li><a href="#Input">Input I/O handlers</a></li>
96 <li><a href="#Output">Output I/O handlers</a></li>
97 <li><a href="#entities">The entities loader</a></li>
98 <li><a href="#Example2">Example of customized I/O</a></li>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +000099</ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000100<h3><a name="General1">General overview</a></h3>
101<p>The module <code><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-xmlio.html">xmlIO.h</a></code> provides
102the interfaces to the libxml I/O system. This consists of 4 main parts:</p>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000103<ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000104<li>Entities loader, this is a routine which tries to fetch the entities
Daniel Veillard2bb89092000-08-31 14:57:50 +0000105 (files) based on their PUBLIC and SYSTEM identifiers. The default loader
106 don't look at the public identifier since libxml do not maintain a
107 catalog. You can redefine you own entity loader by using
108 <code>xmlGetExternalEntityLoader()</code> and
Daniel Veillard9c466822001-10-25 12:03:39 +0000109 <code>xmlSetExternalEntityLoader()</code>. <a href="#entities">Check the
110 example</a>.</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000111 <li>Input I/O buffers which are a commodity structure used by the parser(s)
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000112 input layer to handle fetching the informations to feed the parser. This
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000113 provides buffering and is also a placeholder where the encoding
Daniel Veillard63d83142002-05-20 06:51:05 +0000114 converters to UTF8 are piggy-backed.</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000115 <li>Output I/O buffers are similar to the Input ones and fulfill similar
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000116 task but when generating a serialization from a tree.</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000117 <li>A mechanism to register sets of I/O callbacks and associate them with
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000118 specific naming schemes like the protocol part of the URIs.
119 <p>This affect the default I/O operations and allows to use specific I/O
120 handlers for certain names.</p>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000121 </li>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000122</ul>
Daniel Veillard2bb89092000-08-31 14:57:50 +0000123<p>The general mechanism used when loading http://rpmfind.net/xml.html for
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000124example in the HTML parser is the following:</p>
125<ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000126<li>The default entity loader calls <code>xmlNewInputFromFile()</code> with
Daniel Veillard2bb89092000-08-31 14:57:50 +0000127 the parsing context and the URI string.</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000128 <li>the URI string is checked against the existing registered handlers
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000129 using their match() callback function, if the HTTP module was compiled
130 in, it is registered and its match() function will succeeds</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000131 <li>the open() function of the handler is called and if successful will
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000132 return an I/O Input buffer</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000133 <li>the parser will the start reading from this buffer and progressively
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000134 fetch information from the resource, calling the read() function of the
135 handler until the resource is exhausted</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000136 <li>if an encoding change is detected it will be installed on the input
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000137 buffer, providing buffering and efficient use of the conversion
138 routines</li>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000139 <li>once the parser has finished, the close() function of the handler is
Daniel Veillard63d83142002-05-20 06:51:05 +0000140 called once and the Input buffer and associated resources are
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000141 deallocated.</li>
142</ol>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000143<p>The user defined callbacks are checked first to allow overriding of the
144default libxml I/O routines.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000145<h3><a name="basic">The basic buffer type</a></h3>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000146<p>All the buffer manipulation handling is done using the
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000147<code>xmlBuffer</code> type define in <code><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html">tree.h</a> </code>which is a
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000148resizable memory buffer. The buffer allocation strategy can be selected to be
149either best-fit or use an exponential doubling one (CPU vs. memory use
Daniel Veillard63d83142002-05-20 06:51:05 +0000150trade-off). The values are <code>XML_BUFFER_ALLOC_EXACT</code> and
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000151<code>XML_BUFFER_ALLOC_DOUBLEIT</code>, and can be set individually or on a
152system wide basis using <code>xmlBufferSetAllocationScheme()</code>. A number
153of functions allows to manipulate buffers with names starting with the
154<code>xmlBuffer...</code> prefix.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000155<h3><a name="Input">Input I/O handlers</a></h3>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000156<p>An Input I/O handler is a simple structure
157<code>xmlParserInputBuffer</code> containing a context associated to the
158resource (file descriptor, or pointer to a protocol handler), the read() and
159close() callbacks to use and an xmlBuffer. And extra xmlBuffer and a charset
160encoding handler are also present to support charset conversion when
161needed.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000162<h3><a name="Output">Output I/O handlers</a></h3>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000163<p>An Output handler <code>xmlOutputBuffer</code> is completely similar to an
164Input one except the callbacks are write() and close().</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000165<h3><a name="entities">The entities loader</a></h3>
Daniel Veillard2bb89092000-08-31 14:57:50 +0000166<p>The entity loader resolves requests for new entities and create inputs for
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000167the parser. Creating an input from a filename or an URI string is done
168through the xmlNewInputFromFile() routine. The default entity loader do not
169handle the PUBLIC identifier associated with an entity (if any). So it just
170calls xmlNewInputFromFile() with the SYSTEM identifier (which is mandatory in
Daniel Veillard2bb89092000-08-31 14:57:50 +0000171XML).</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000172<p>If you want to hook up a catalog mechanism then you simply need to
173override the default entity loader, here is an example:</p>
Daniel Veillard2bb89092000-08-31 14:57:50 +0000174<pre>#include &lt;libxml/xmlIO.h&gt;
175
176xmlExternalEntityLoader defaultLoader = NULL;
177
178xmlParserInputPtr
179xmlMyExternalEntityLoader(const char *URL, const char *ID,
180 xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt) {
181 xmlParserInputPtr ret;
182 const char *fileID = NULL;
183 /* lookup for the fileID depending on ID */
184
185 ret = xmlNewInputFromFile(ctxt, fileID);
186 if (ret != NULL)
187 return(ret);
188 if (defaultLoader != NULL)
189 ret = defaultLoader(URL, ID, ctxt);
190 return(ret);
191}
192
193int main(..) {
194 ...
195
196 /*
197 * Install our own entity loader
198 */
199 defaultLoader = xmlGetExternalEntityLoader();
200 xmlSetExternalEntityLoader(xmlMyExternalEntityLoader);
201
202 ...
203}</pre>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000204<h3><a name="Example2">Example of customized I/O</a></h3>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000205<p>This example come from <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages/0708.html">a
206real use case</a>, xmlDocDump() closes the FILE * passed by the application
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000207and this was a problem. The <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages/0711.html">solution</a> was to redefine a
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000208new output handler with the closing call deactivated:</p>
209<ol>
Daniel Veillardc0801af2002-05-28 16:28:42 +0000210<li>First define a new I/O output allocator where the output don't close
211 the file:
Daniel Veillarda7ad4522000-08-31 14:19:54 +0000212 <pre>xmlOutputBufferPtr
213xmlOutputBufferCreateOwn(FILE *file, xmlCharEncodingHandlerPtr encoder) {
214    xmlOutputBufferPtr ret;
215    
216    if (xmlOutputCallbackInitialized == 0)
217        xmlRegisterDefaultOutputCallbacks();
218
219    if (file == NULL) return(NULL);
220    ret = xmlAllocOutputBuffer(encoder);
221    if (ret != NULL) {
222        ret-&gt;context = file;
223        ret-&gt;writecallback = xmlFileWrite;
224        ret-&gt;closecallback = NULL; /* No close callback */
225    }
226    return(ret); <br>
Daniel Veillard1eb24242002-03-18 11:33:03 +0000227
Daniel Veillard34ce8be2002-03-18 19:37:11 +0000228
229
Daniel Veillard19274092002-03-25 16:48:03 +0000230
Daniel Veillardb2fb8ed2002-04-01 09:33:12 +0000231
Daniel Veillarda8a89fe2002-04-12 21:03:34 +0000232
Daniel Veillardc3975342002-04-15 18:54:52 +0000233
Daniel Veillard0bfbb422002-04-26 09:21:45 +0000234
Daniel Veillard93d3a472002-04-26 14:04:55 +0000235
Daniel Veillardcf27f7c2002-04-30 07:12:39 +0000236
Daniel Veillarde6d8e202002-05-02 06:11:10 +0000237
Daniel Veillard9b6fd302002-05-13 12:06:47 +0000238
Daniel Veillardc0801af2002-05-28 16:28:42 +0000239
Daniel Veillard21473672002-06-17 07:29:22 +0000240
Daniel Veillard782afda2002-07-08 15:12:49 +0000241
Daniel Veillard42766c02002-08-22 20:52:17 +0000242
Daniel Veillarde1662542002-08-28 11:50:59 +0000243
Daniel Veillarde16b5742002-09-26 17:50:03 +0000244
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000245} </pre>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000246 </li>
247 <li>And then use it to save the document:
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000248 <pre>FILE *f;
Daniel Veillarda7ad4522000-08-31 14:19:54 +0000249xmlOutputBufferPtr output;
250xmlDocPtr doc;
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000251int res;
Daniel Veillarda7ad4522000-08-31 14:19:54 +0000252
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000253f = ...
254doc = ....
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000255
Daniel Veillarda7ad4522000-08-31 14:19:54 +0000256output = xmlOutputBufferCreateOwn(f, NULL);
257res = xmlSaveFileTo(output, doc, NULL);
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000258 </pre>
Daniel Veillard0b28e882002-07-24 23:47:05 +0000259 </li>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000260</ol>
Daniel Veillard3f4c40f2002-02-13 09:19:28 +0000261<p><a href="bugs.html">Daniel Veillard</a></p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000262</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td>
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