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blob: 15061d3c0f344ef335eb756e7fec1f767f2f09b0 [file] [log] [blame]
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1<html>
2<head>
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]3 <title>The XML C library for Gnome</title>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]4 <meta name="GENERATOR" content="amaya V4.1">
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]5 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html">
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]6</head>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]7
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]8<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]9<p><a href="http://www.gnome.org/"><img src="smallfootonly.gif"
10alt="Gnome Logo"></a><a href="http://www.w3.org/Status"><img src="w3c.png"
11alt="W3C Logo"></a></p>
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]12
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]13<h1 align="center">The XML C library for Gnome</h1>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]14
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]15<h2 style="text-align: center">libxml, a.k.a. gnome-xml</h2>
16
17<p></p>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]18<ul>
19 <li><a href="#Introducti">Introduction</a></li>
20 <li><a href="#Documentat">Documentation</a></li>
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]21 <li><a href="#Reporting">Reporting bugs and getting help</a></li>
22 <li><a href="#help">how to help</a></li>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]23 <li><a href="#Downloads">Downloads</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]24 <li><a href="#News">News</a></li>
25 <li><a href="#XML">XML</a></li>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]26 <li><a href="#XSLT">XSLT</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]27 <li><a href="#tree">The tree output</a></li>
28 <li><a href="#interface">The SAX interface</a></li>
29 <li><a href="#library">The XML library interfaces</a>
30 <ul>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]31 <li><a href="#Invoking">Invoking the parser: the pull way</a></li>
32 <li><a href="#Invoking">Invoking the parser: the push way</a></li>
33 <li><a href="#Invoking2">Invoking the parser: the SAX interface</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]34 <li><a href="#Building">Building a tree from scratch</a></li>
35 <li><a href="#Traversing">Traversing the tree</a></li>
36 <li><a href="#Modifying">Modifying the tree</a></li>
37 <li><a href="#Saving">Saving the tree</a></li>
38 <li><a href="#Compressio">Compression</a></li>
39 </ul>
40 </li>
41 <li><a href="#Entities">Entities or no entities</a></li>
42 <li><a href="#Namespaces">Namespaces</a></li>
43 <li><a href="#Validation">Validation</a></li>
44 <li><a href="#Principles">DOM principles</a></li>
45 <li><a href="#real">A real example</a></li>
Daniel Veillard96984452000-08-31 13:50:12 +0000[diff] [blame]46 <li><a href="#Contributi">Contributions</a></li>
47</ul>
48
49<p>Separate documents:</p>
50<ul>
51 <li><a href="upgrade.html">upgrade instructions for migrating to
52 libxml2</a></li>
53 <li><a href="encoding.html">libxml Internationalization support</a></li>
54 <li><a href="xmlio.html">libxml Input/Output interfaces</a></li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]55 <li><a href="xmlmem.html">libxml Memory interfaces</a></li>
Daniel Veillard300f7d62000-11-24 13:04:04 +0000[diff] [blame]56 <li><a href="xmldtd.html">a short introduction about DTDs and
57 libxml</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]58 <li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/">the libxslt page</a></li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]59</ul>
60
61<h2><a name="Introducti">Introduction</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]62
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]63<p>This document describes libxml, the <a
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]64href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML</a> C library developped for the <a
65href="http://www.gnome.org/">Gnome</a> project. <a
66href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML is a standard</a> for building tag-based
67structured documents/data.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]68
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]69<p>Here are some key points about libxml:</p>
70<ul>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]71 <li>Libxml exports Push and Pull type parser interfaces for both XML and
72 HTML.</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]73 <li>Libxml can do DTD validation at parse time, using a parsed document
74 instance, or with an arbitrary DTD.</li>
75 <li>Libxml now includes nearly complete <a
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]76 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath">XPath</a> and <a
Daniel Veillard0c069222000-10-21 09:25:52 +0000[diff] [blame]77 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr">XPointer</a> implementations.</li>
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]78 <li>It is written in plain C, making as few assumptions as possible, and
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]79 sticking closely to ANSI C/POSIX for easy embedding. Works on
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]80 Linux/Unix/Windows, ported to a number of other platforms.</li>
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]81 <li>Basic support for HTTP and FTP client allowing aplications to fetch
82 remote resources</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]83 <li>The design is modular, most of the extensions can be compiled out.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]84 <li>The internal document repesentation is as close as possible to the <a
85 href="http://www.w3.org/DOM/">DOM</a> interfaces.</li>
86 <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]87 like interface</a>; the interface is designed to be compatible with <a
88 href="http://www.jclark.com/xml/expat.html">Expat</a>.</li>
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]89 <li>This library is released both under the <a
90 href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software-19980720.html">W3C
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]91 IPR</a> and the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html">GNU
92 LGPL</a>. Use either at your convenience, basically this should make
93 everybody happy, if not, drop me a mail.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]94</ul>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]95
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]96<h2><a name="Documentat">Documentation</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]97
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]98<p>There are some on-line resources about using libxml:</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]99<ol>
Daniel Veillard365e13b2000-07-02 07:56:37 +0000[diff] [blame]100 <li>Check the <a href="FAQ.html">FAQ</a></li>
Daniel Veillardc19fccc2000-07-03 11:52:01 +0000[diff] [blame]101 <li>Check the <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-lib.html">extensive
Daniel Veillard8c6d6af2000-08-25 17:14:13 +0000[diff] [blame]102 documentation</a> automatically extracted from code comments (using <a
103 href="http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&amp;dir=gtk-doc">gtk
104 doc</a>).</li>
Daniel Veillard8d869642000-07-14 12:12:59 +0000[diff] [blame]105 <li>Look at the documentation about <a href="encoding.html">libxml
106 internationalization support</a></li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]107 <li>This page provides a global overview and <a href="#real">some
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]108 examples</a> on how to use libxml.</li>
109 <li><a href="mailto:james@daa.com.au">James Henstridge</a> wrote <a
110 href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">some nice
111 documentation</a> explaining how to use the libxml SAX interface.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]112 <li>George Lebl wrote <a
113 href="http://www-4.ibm.com/software/developer/library/gnome3/">an article
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]114 for IBM developerWorks</a> about using libxml.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]115 <li>It is also a good idea to check to <a href="mailto:raph@levien.com">Raph
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]116 Levien</a>'s <a href="http://levien.com/gnome/">web site</a> since he is
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]117 building the <a href="http://levien.com/gnome/gdome.html">DOM interface
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]118 gdome</a> on top of libxml result tree and an implementation of <a
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]119 href="http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/">SVG</a> called <a
120 href="http://www.levien.com/svg/">gill</a>. Check his <a
121 href="http://www.levien.com/gnome/domination.html">DOMination
122 paper</a>.</li>
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]123 <li>Check <a href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gnome-xml/TODO">the TODO
124 file</a></li>
125 <li>Read the <a href="upgrade.html">1.x to 2.x upgrade path</a>. If you are
126 starting a new project using libxml you should really use the 2.x
127 version.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]128 <li>And don't forget to look at the <a href="/messages/">mailing-list
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]129 archive</a>.</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]130</ol>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]131
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]132<h2><a name="Reporting">Reporting bugs and getting help</a></h2>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]133
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]134<p>Well, bugs or missing features are always possible, and I will make a point
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]135of fixing them in a timely fashion. The best way to report a bug is to use the
Daniel Veillard81781102001-03-07 09:31:47 +0000[diff] [blame]136<a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml">Gnome bug
137tracking database</a> (make sure to use the "libxml" module name). I look at
138reports there regularly and it's good to have a reminder when a bug is still
139open. Check the <a href="http://bugs.gnome.org/Reporting.html">instructions on
140reporting bugs</a> and be sure to specify that the bug is for the package
141libxml.</p>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]142
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]143<p>There is also a mailing-list <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]144href="mailto:xml@gnome.org">xml@gnome.org</a> for libxml, with an <a
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]145href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages">on-line archive</a>. To subscribe to this
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]146list, please visit the <a
147href="http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/xml">associated Web</a> page and
148follow the instructions.</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]149
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]150<p>Alternatively, you can just send the bug to the <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]151href="mailto:xml@gnome.org">xml@gnome.org</a> list; if it's really libxml
Daniel Veillardf121ab72000-08-29 23:40:42 +0000[diff] [blame]152related I will approve it..</p>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]153
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]154<p>Of course, bugs reported with a suggested patch for fixing them will
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]155probably be processed faster.</p>
156
157<p>If you're looking for help, a quick look at <a
158href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages/#407">the list archive</a> may actually
159provide the answer, I usually send source samples when answering libxml usage
Daniel Veillard6f0adb52000-07-03 11:41:26 +0000[diff] [blame]160questions. The <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/book1.html">auto-generated
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]161documentantion</a> is not as polished as I would like (i need to learn more
162about Docbook), but it's a good starting point.</p>
163
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]164<h2><a name="help">How to help</a></h2>
165
166<p>You can help the project in various ways, the best thing to do first is to
167subscribe to the mailing-list as explained before, check the <a
168href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages/">archives </a>and the <a
169href="http://bugs.gnome.org/db/pa/lgnome-xml.html">Gnome bug
170database:</a>:</p>
171<ol>
172 <li>provide patches when you find problems</li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]173 <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]174 be integrated in all cases but help pinpointing portability problems
175 and</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]176 <li>provide documentation fixes (either as patches to the code comments or
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]177 as HTML diffs).</li>
178 <li>provide new documentations pieces (translations, examples, etc ...)</li>
179 <li>Check the TODO file and try to close one of the items</li>
180 <li>take one of the points raised in the archive or the bug database and
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]181 provide a fix. <a href="mailto:Daniel.Veillard@imag.fr">Get in touch with
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]182 me </a>before to avoid synchronization problems and check that the
183 suggested fix will fit in nicely :-)</li>
184</ol>
185
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]186<h2><a name="Downloads">Downloads</a></h2>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]187
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]188<p>The latest versions of libxml can be found on <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]189href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">xmlsoft.org</a> or on the <a
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]190href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/MIRRORS.html">Gnome FTP server</a> either
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]191as a <a href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/libxml/">source
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]192archive</a> or <a
193href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/contrib/redhat/SRPMS/">RPM packages</a>.
194(NOTE that you need both the <a
Daniel Veillardc19fccc2000-07-03 11:52:01 +0000[diff] [blame]195href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2.html">libxml(2)</a> and <a
196href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2-devel.html">libxml(2)-devel</a>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]197packages installed to compile applications using libxml.)</p>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]198
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]199<p><a name="Snapshot">Snapshot:</a></p>
200<ul>
201 <li>Code from the W3C cvs base libxml <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]202 href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/cvs-snapshot.tar.gz">cvs-snapshot.tar.gz</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]203 <li>Docs, content of the web site, the list archive included <a
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]204 href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml-docs.tar.gz">libxml-docs.tar.gz</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]205</ul>
206
207<p><a name="Contribs">Contribs:</a></p>
208
209<p>I do accept external contributions, especially if compiling on another
210platform, 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]211<a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/contribs/">contrib directory</a></p>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]212
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]213<p>Libxml is also available from CVS:</p>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]214<ul>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]215 <li><p>The <a
216 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]217 CVS base</a>. Check the <a
218 href="http://developer.gnome.org/tools/cvs.html">Gnome CVS Tools</a> page;
219 the CVS module is <b>gnome-xml</b>.</p>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]220 </li>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]221 <li>The <strong>libxslt</strong> module is also present there</li>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]222</ul>
223
224<h2><a name="News">News</a></h2>
225
Daniel Veillard944b5ff1999-12-15 19:08:24 +0000[diff] [blame]226<h3>CVS only : check the <a
227href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gnome-xml/ChangeLog">Changelog</a> file
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]228for a really accurate description</h3>
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]229
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]230<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]231you want to test those</p>
232<ul>
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]233 <li>Implementing <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT">XSLT</a>, this is done as
234 a separate C library on top of libxml called libxslt, not released yet but
235 available from CVS</li>
Daniel Veillard28929b22000-11-13 18:22:49 +0000[diff] [blame]236 <li>Finishing up <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr">XPointer</a> and <a
237 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude">XInclude</a></li>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]238 <li>(seeems working but delayed from release) parsing/import of Docbook SGML
239 docs</li>
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]240</ul>
241
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame^]242<h3>2.3.4: Mar 10 2001</h3>
243<ul>
244 <li>Fixed bugs #51860 and #51861</li>
245 <li>Added a global variable xmlDefaultBufferSize to allow default buffer
246 size to be application tunable.</li>
247 <li>Some cleanup in the validation code, still a bug left and this part
248 should probably be rewritten to support ambiguous content model :-\</li>
249 <li>Fix a couple of serious bugs introduced or raised by changes in 2.3.3
250 parser</li>
251 <li>Fixed another bug in xmlNodeGetContent()</li>
252 <li>Bjorn fixed XPath node collection and Number formatting</li>
253 <li>Fixed a loop reported in the HTML parsing</li>
254 <li>blank space are reported even if the Dtd content model proves that they
255 are formatting spaces, this is for XmL conformance</li>
256</ul>
257
Daniel Veillardb402c072001-03-01 17:28:58 +0000[diff] [blame]258<h3>2.3.3: Mar 1 2001</h3>
259<ul>
260 <li>small change in XPath for XSLT</li>
261 <li>documentation cleanups</li>
262 <li>fix in validation by Gary Pennington</li>
263 <li>serious parsing performances improvements</li>
264</ul>
265
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]266<h3>2.3.2: Feb 24 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard71681102001-02-24 17:48:53 +0000[diff] [blame]267<ul>
268 <li>chasing XPath bugs, found a bunch, completed some TODO</li>
269 <li>fixed a Dtd parsing bug</li>
270 <li>fixed a bug in xmlNodeGetContent</li>
271 <li>ID/IDREF support partly rewritten by Gary Pennington</li>
272</ul>
273
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]274<h3>2.3.1: Feb 15 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]275<ul>
276 <li>some XPath and HTML bug fixes for XSLT</li>
277 <li>small extension of the hash table interfaces for DOM gdome2
278 implementation</li>
279 <li>A few bug fixes</li>
280</ul>
281
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]282<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]283<ul>
284 <li>Lots of XPath bug fixes</li>
285 <li>Add a mode with Dtd lookup but without validation error reporting for
286 XSLT</li>
287 <li>Add support for text node without escaping (XSLT)</li>
288 <li>bug fixes for xmlCheckFilename</li>
289 <li>validation code bug fixes from Gary Pennington</li>
290 <li>Patch from Paul D. Smith correcting URI path normalization</li>
291 <li>Patch to allow simultaneous install of libxml-devel and
292 libxml2-devel</li>
293 <li>the example Makefile is now fixed</li>
294 <li>added HTML to the RPM packages</li>
295 <li>tree copying bugfixes</li>
296 <li>updates to Windows makefiles</li>
297 <li>optimisation patch from Bjorn Reese</li>
298</ul>
299
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]300<h3>2.2.11: Jan 4 2001</h3>
Daniel Veillard503b8932001-01-05 06:36:31 +0000[diff] [blame]301<ul>
302 <li>bunch of bug fixes (memory I/O, xpath, ftp/http, ...)</li>
303 <li>added htmlHandleOmittedElem()</li>
304 <li>Applied Bjorn Reese's IPV6 first patch</li>
305 <li>Applied Paul D. Smith patches for validation of XInclude results</li>
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]306 <li>added XPointer xmlns() new scheme support</li>
Daniel Veillard503b8932001-01-05 06:36:31 +0000[diff] [blame]307</ul>
308
Daniel Veillard2ddd23d2000-11-25 10:42:19 +0000[diff] [blame]309<h3>2.2.10: Nov 25 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard9d343c42000-11-25 10:12:43 +0000[diff] [blame]310<ul>
311 <li>Fix the Windows problems of 2.2.8</li>
312 <li>integrate OpenVMS patches</li>
313 <li>better handling of some nasty HTML input</li>
314 <li>Improved the XPointer implementation</li>
315 <li>integrate a number of provided patches</li>
316</ul>
317
Daniel Veillard2ddd23d2000-11-25 10:42:19 +0000[diff] [blame]318<h3>2.2.9: Nov 25 2000</h3>
319<ul>
320 <li>erroneous release :-(</li>
321</ul>
322
Daniel Veillard28929b22000-11-13 18:22:49 +0000[diff] [blame]323<h3>2.2.8: Nov 13 2000</h3>
324<ul>
325 <li>First version of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude">XInclude</a>
326 support</li>
327 <li>Patch in conditional section handling</li>
328 <li>updated MS compiler project</li>
329 <li>fixed some XPath problems</li>
330 <li>added an URI escaping function</li>
331 <li>some other bug fixes</li>
332</ul>
333
334<h3>2.2.7: Oct 31 2000</h3>
335<ul>
336 <li>added message redirection</li>
337 <li>XPath improvements (thanks TOM !)</li>
338 <li>xmlIOParseDTD() added</li>
339 <li>various small fixes in the HTML, URI, HTTP and XPointer support</li>
340 <li>some cleanup of the Makefile, autoconf and the distribution content</li>
341</ul>
342
Daniel Veillard29a11cc2000-10-25 13:32:39 +0000[diff] [blame]343<h3>2.2.6: Oct 25 2000:</h3>
344<ul>
345 <li>Added an hash table module, migrated a number of internal structure to
346 those</li>
347 <li>Fixed a posteriori validation problems</li>
348 <li>HTTP module cleanups</li>
349 <li>HTML parser improvements (tag errors, script/style handling, attribute
350 normalization)</li>
351 <li>coalescing of adjacent text nodes</li>
352 <li>couple of XPath bug fixes, exported the internal API</li>
353</ul>
354
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]355<h3>2.2.5: Oct 15 2000:</h3>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]356<ul>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]357 <li>XPointer implementation and testsuite</li>
358 <li>Lot of XPath fixes, added variable and functions registration, more
359 tests</li>
360 <li>Portability fixes, lots of enhancements toward an easy Windows build and
361 release</li>
362 <li>Late validation fixes</li>
363 <li>Integrated a lot of contributed patches</li>
364 <li>added memory management docs</li>
Daniel Veillardab8500d2000-10-15 21:06:19 +0000[diff] [blame]365 <li>a performance problem when using large buffer seems fixed</li>
Daniel Veillard189446d2000-10-13 10:23:06 +0000[diff] [blame]366</ul>
367
368<h3>2.2.4: Oct 1 2000:</h3>
369<ul>
370 <li>main XPath problem fixed</li>
371 <li>Integrated portability patches for Windows</li>
372 <li>Serious bug fixes on the URI and HTML code</li>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]373</ul>
374
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]375<h3>2.2.3: Sep 17 2000</h3>
376<ul>
377 <li>bug fixes</li>
378 <li>cleanup of entity handling code</li>
379 <li>overall review of all loops in the parsers, all sprintf usage has been
380 checked too</li>
381 <li>Far better handling of larges Dtd. Validating against Docbook XML Dtd
382 works smoothly now.</li>
383</ul>
384
385<h3>1.8.10: Sep 6 2000</h3>
386<ul>
387 <li>bug fix release for some Gnome projects</li>
388</ul>
389
390<h3>2.2.2: August 12 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard786d7c82000-08-12 23:38:57 +0000[diff] [blame]391<ul>
392 <li>mostly bug fixes</li>
Daniel Veillardec78c0f2000-08-25 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]393 <li>started adding routines to access xml parser context options</li>
Daniel Veillard786d7c82000-08-12 23:38:57 +0000[diff] [blame]394</ul>
395
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]396<h3>2.2.1: July 21 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillarda2679fa2000-07-22 02:38:15 +0000[diff] [blame]397<ul>
398 <li>a purely bug fixes release</li>
399 <li>fixed an encoding support problem when parsing from a memory block</li>
400 <li>fixed a DOCTYPE parsing problem</li>
401 <li>removed a bug in the function allowing to override the memory allocation
402 routines</li>
403</ul>
404
Daniel Veillardd5f97f82000-09-17 16:38:14 +0000[diff] [blame]405<h3>2.2.0: July 14 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard94e90602000-07-17 14:38:19 +0000[diff] [blame]406<ul>
407 <li>applied a lot of portability fixes</li>
408 <li>better encoding support/cleanup and saving (content is now always
409 encoded in UTF-8)</li>
410 <li>the HTML parser now correctly handles encodings</li>
411 <li>added xmlHasProp()</li>
412 <li>fixed a serious problem with &amp;#38;</li>
413 <li>propagated the fix to FTP client</li>
414 <li>cleanup, bugfixes, etc ...</li>
415 <li>Added a page about <a href="encoding.html">libxml Internationalization
416 support</a></li>
417</ul>
418
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]419<h3>1.8.9: July 9 2000</h3>
420<ul>
421 <li>fixed the spec the RPMs should be better</li>
422 <li>fixed a serious bug in the FTP implementation, released 1.8.9 to solve
423 rpmfind users problem</li>
424</ul>
425
Daniel Veillard6388e172000-07-03 16:07:19 +0000[diff] [blame]426<h3>2.1.1: July 1 2000</h3>
427<ul>
428 <li>fixes a couple of bugs in the 2.1.0 packaging</li>
429 <li>improvements on the HTML parser</li>
430</ul>
431
Daniel Veillard3f6f7f62000-06-30 17:58:25 +0000[diff] [blame]432<h3>2.1.0 and 1.8.8: June 29 2000</h3>
433<ul>
434 <li>1.8.8 is mostly a comodity package for upgrading to libxml2 accoding to
435 <a href="upgrade.html">new instructions</a>. It fixes a nasty problem
436 about &amp;#38; charref parsing</li>
437 <li>2.1.0 also ease the upgrade from libxml v1 to the recent version. it
438 also contains numerous fixes and enhancements:
439 <ul>
440 <li>added xmlStopParser() to stop parsing</li>
441 <li>improved a lot parsing speed when there is large CDATA blocs</li>
442 <li>includes XPath patches provided by Picdar Technology</li>
443 <li>tried to fix as much as possible DtD validation and namespace
444 related problems</li>
445 <li>output to a given encoding has been added/tested</li>
446 <li>lot of various fixes</li>
447 </ul>
448 </li>
449</ul>
450
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]451<h3>2.0.0: Apr 12 2000</h3>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]452<ul>
453 <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]454 idea to check the 1.x to 2.x upgrade instructions. NOTE: while initally
455 scheduled for Apr 3 the relase occured only on Apr 12 due to massive
456 workload.</li>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]457 <li>The include are now located under $prefix/include/libxml (instead of
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]458 $prefix/include/gnome-xml), they also are referenced by
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]459 <pre>#include &lt;libxml/xxx.h&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]460 <p>instead of</p>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]461 <pre>#include "xxx.h"</pre>
462 </li>
Daniel Veillard8f621982000-03-20 13:07:15 +0000[diff] [blame]463 <li>a new URI module for parsing URIs and following strictly RFC 2396</li>
464 <li>the memory allocation routines used by libxml can now be overloaded
465 dynamically by using xmlMemSetup()</li>
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]466 <li>The previously CVS only tool tester has been renamed
467 <strong>xmllint</strong> and is now installed as part of the libxml2
468 package</li>
Daniel Veillarde0aed302000-04-16 08:52:20 +0000[diff] [blame]469 <li>The I/O interface has been revamped. There is now ways to plug in
470 specific I/O modules, either at the URI scheme detection level using
471 xmlRegisterInputCallbacks() or by passing I/O functions when creating a
472 parser context using xmlCreateIOParserCtxt()</li>
473 <li>there is a C preprocessor macro LIBXML_VERSION providing the version
474 number of the libxml module in use</li>
475 <li>a number of optional features of libxml can now be excluded at configure
476 time (FTP/HTTP/HTML/XPath/Debug)</li>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]477</ul>
478
479<h3>2.0.0beta: Mar 14 2000</h3>
480<ul>
481 <li>This is a first Beta release of libxml version 2</li>
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame^]482 <li>It's available only from<a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">xmlsoft.org
483 FTP</a>, it's packaged as libxml2-2.0.0beta and available as tar and
484 RPMs</li>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]485 <li>This version is now the head in the Gnome CVS base, the old one is
486 available under the tag LIB_XML_1_X</li>
487 <li>This includes a very large set of changes. Froma programmatic point of
488 view applications should not have to be modified too much, check the <a
489 href="upgrade.html">upgrade page</a></li>
490 <li>Some interfaces may changes (especially a bit about encoding).</li>
491 <li>the updates includes:
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]492 <ul>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]493 <li>fix I18N support. ISO-Latin-x/UTF-8/UTF-16 (nearly) seems correctly
494 handled now</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]495 <li>Better handling of entities, especially well formedness checking and
496 proper PEref extensions in external subsets</li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]497 <li>DTD conditional sections</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]498 <li>Validation now correcly handle entities content</li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]499 <li><a href="http://rpmfind.net/tools/gdome/messages/0039.html">change
500 structures to accomodate DOM</a></li>
Daniel Veillard6c8b1172000-03-01 00:40:41 +0000[diff] [blame]501 </ul>
502 </li>
Daniel Veillardedfb29b2000-03-14 19:59:05 +0000[diff] [blame]503 <li>Serious progress were made toward compliance, <a
504 href="conf/result.html">here are the result of the test</a> against the
505 OASIS testsuite (except the japanese tests since I don't support that
506 encoding yet). This URL is rebuilt every couple of hours using the CVS
507 head version.</li>
Daniel Veillarde41f2b72000-01-30 20:00:07 +0000[diff] [blame]508</ul>
509
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]510<h3>1.8.7: Mar 6 2000</h3>
511<ul>
512 <li>This is a bug fix release:</li>
513 <li>It is possible to disable the ignorable blanks heuristic used by
514 libxml-1.x, a new function xmlKeepBlanksDefault(0) will allow this. Note
515 that for adherence to XML spec, this behaviour will be disabled by default
516 in 2.x . The same function will allow to keep compatibility for old
517 code.</li>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]518 <li>Blanks in &lt;a&gt; &lt;/a&gt; constructs are not ignored anymore,
519 avoiding heuristic is really the Right Way :-\</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]520 <li>The unchecked use of snprintf which was breaking libxml-1.8.6
521 compilation on some platforms has been fixed</li>
522 <li>nanoftp.c nanohttp.c: Fixed '#' and '?' stripping when processing
523 URIs</li>
524</ul>
525
Daniel Veillarde41f2b72000-01-30 20:00:07 +0000[diff] [blame]526<h3>1.8.6: Jan 31 2000</h3>
527<ul>
528 <li>added a nanoFTP transport module, debugged until the new version of <a
529 href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/rpmfind.html">rpmfind</a> can use
530 it without troubles</li>
Daniel Veillardda07c342000-01-25 18:31:22 +0000[diff] [blame]531</ul>
532
533<h3>1.8.5: Jan 21 2000</h3>
534<ul>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]535 <li>adding APIs to parse a well balanced chunk of XML (production <a
536 href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#NT-content">[43] content</a> of the XML
537 spec)</li>
Daniel Veillard461a66c2000-01-18 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]538 <li>fixed a hideous bug in xmlGetProp pointed by Rune.Djurhuus@fast.no</li>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]539 <li>Jody Goldberg &lt;jgoldberg@home.com&gt; provided another patch trying
540 to solve the zlib checks problems</li>
Daniel Veillard461a66c2000-01-18 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]541 <li>The current state in gnome CVS base is expected to ship as 1.8.5 with
542 gnumeric soon</li>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]543</ul>
544
545<h3>1.8.4: Jan 13 2000</h3>
546<ul>
547 <li>bug fixes, reintroduced xmlNewGlobalNs(), fixed xmlNewNs()</li>
548 <li>all exit() call should have been removed from libxml</li>
549 <li>fixed a problem with INCLUDE_WINSOCK on WIN32 platform</li>
550 <li>added newDocFragment()</li>
Daniel Veillardf84f71f2000-01-05 19:54:23 +0000[diff] [blame]551</ul>
552
553<h3>1.8.3: Jan 5 2000</h3>
554<ul>
555 <li>a Push interface for the XML and HTML parsers</li>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]556 <li>a shell-like interface to the document tree (try tester --shell :-)</li>
Daniel Veillarddbfd6411999-12-28 16:35:14 +0000[diff] [blame]557 <li>lots of bug fixes and improvement added over XMas hollidays</li>
Daniel Veillard437b87b2000-01-03 17:30:46 +0000[diff] [blame]558 <li>fixed the DTD parsing code to work with the xhtml DTD</li>
Daniel Veillardf84f71f2000-01-05 19:54:23 +0000[diff] [blame]559 <li>added xmlRemoveProp(), xmlRemoveID() and xmlRemoveRef()</li>
560 <li>Fixed bugs in xmlNewNs()</li>
Daniel Veillard437b87b2000-01-03 17:30:46 +0000[diff] [blame]561 <li>External entity loading code has been revamped, now it uses
Daniel Veillardf84f71f2000-01-05 19:54:23 +0000[diff] [blame]562 xmlLoadExternalEntity(), some fix on entities processing were added</li>
Daniel Veillard437b87b2000-01-03 17:30:46 +0000[diff] [blame]563 <li>cleaned up WIN32 includes of socket stuff</li>
Daniel Veillard5cb5ab81999-12-21 15:35:29 +0000[diff] [blame]564</ul>
565
566<h3>1.8.2: Dec 21 1999</h3>
567<ul>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]568 <li>I got another problem with includes and C++, I hope this issue is fixed
569 for good this time</li>
Daniel Veillard5cb5ab81999-12-21 15:35:29 +0000[diff] [blame]570 <li>Added a few tree modification functions: xmlReplaceNode,
571 xmlAddPrevSibling, xmlAddNextSibling, xmlNodeSetName and
572 xmlDocSetRootElement</li>
573 <li>Tried to improve the HTML output with help from <a
574 href="mailto:clahey@umich.edu">Chris Lahey</a></li>
Daniel Veillarde4e51311999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]575</ul>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]576
Daniel Veillarde4e51311999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]577<h3>1.8.1: Dec 18 1999</h3>
578<ul>
579 <li>various patches to avoid troubles when using libxml with C++ compilers
580 the "namespace" keyword and C escaping in include files</li>
581 <li>a problem in one of the core macros IS_CHAR was corrected</li>
582 <li>fixed a bug introduced in 1.8.0 breaking default namespace processing,
583 and more specifically the Dia application</li>
Daniel Veillard944b5ff1999-12-15 19:08:24 +0000[diff] [blame]584 <li>fixed a posteriori validation (validation after parsing, or by using a
585 Dtd not specified in the original document)</li>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]586 <li>fixed a bug in</li>
Daniel Veillard10a2c651999-12-12 13:03:50 +0000[diff] [blame]587</ul>
588
589<h3>1.8.0: Dec 12 1999</h3>
590<ul>
591 <li>cleanup, especially memory wise</li>
592 <li>the parser should be more reliable, especially the HTML one, it should
593 not crash, whatever the input !</li>
594 <li>Integrated various patches, especially a speedup improvement for large
595 dataset from <a href="mailto:cnygard@bellatlantic.net">Carl Nygard</a>,
596 configure with --with-buffers to enable them.</li>
597 <li>attribute normalization, oops should have been added long ago !</li>
598 <li>attributes defaulted from Dtds should be available, xmlSetProp() now
599 does entities escapting by default.</li>
Daniel Veillard4c3a2031999-11-19 17:46:26 +0000[diff] [blame]600</ul>
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]601
602<h3>1.7.4: Oct 25 1999</h3>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]603<ul>
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]604 <li>Lots of HTML improvement</li>
605 <li>Fixed some errors when saving both XML and HTML</li>
606 <li>More examples, the regression tests should now look clean</li>
607 <li>Fixed a bug with contiguous charref</li>
608</ul>
609
610<h3>1.7.3: Sep 29 1999</h3>
611<ul>
612 <li>portability problems fixed</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]613 <li>snprintf was used unconditionnally, leading to link problems on system
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]614 were it's not available, fixed</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]615</ul>
616
617<h3>1.7.1: Sep 24 1999</h3>
618<ul>
619 <li>The basic type for strings manipulated by libxml has been renamed in
620 1.7.1 from <strong>CHAR</strong> to <strong>xmlChar</strong>. The reason
621 is that CHAR was conflicting with a predefined type on Windows. However on
622 non WIN32 environment, compatibility is provided by the way of a
623 <strong>#define </strong>.</li>
624 <li>Changed another error : the use of a structure field called errno, and
625 leading to troubles on platforms where it's a macro</li>
626</ul>
627
628<h3>1.7.0: sep 23 1999</h3>
629<ul>
630 <li>Added the ability to fetch remote DTD or parsed entities, see the <a
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]631 href="html/libxml-nanohttp.html">nanohttp</a> module.</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]632 <li>Added an errno to report errors by another mean than a simple printf
633 like callback</li>
634 <li>Finished ID/IDREF support and checking when validation</li>
635 <li>Serious memory leaks fixed (there is now a <a
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]636 href="html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">memory wrapper</a> module)</li>
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]637 <li>Improvement of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath">XPath</a>
638 implementation</li>
639 <li>Added an HTML parser front-end</li>
640</ul>
641
642<h2><a name="XML">XML</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]643
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]644<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]645markup-based structured documents. Here is <a name="example">an example XML
646document</a>:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]647<pre>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
648&lt;EXAMPLE prop1="gnome is great" prop2="&amp;amp; linux too"&gt;
649 &lt;head&gt;
650 &lt;title&gt;Welcome to Gnome&lt;/title&gt;
651 &lt;/head&gt;
652 &lt;chapter&gt;
653 &lt;title&gt;The Linux adventure&lt;/title&gt;
654 &lt;p&gt;bla bla bla ...&lt;/p&gt;
655 &lt;image href="linus.gif"/&gt;
656 &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;
657 &lt;/chapter&gt;
658&lt;/EXAMPLE&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]659
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]660<p>The first line specifies that it's an XML document and gives useful
661information about its encoding. Then the document is a text format whose
662structure is specified by tags between brackets. <strong>Each tag opened has
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]663to be closed</strong>. XML is pedantic about this. However, if a tag is empty
664(no content), a single tag can serve as both the opening and closing tag if it
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]665ends with <code>/&gt;</code> rather than with <code>&gt;</code>. Note that,
666for example, the image tag has no content (just an attribute) and is closed by
667ending the tag with <code>/&gt;</code>.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]668
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]669<p>XML can be applied sucessfully to a wide range of uses, from long term
670structured document maintenance (where it follows the steps of SGML) to simple
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]671data encoding mechanisms like configuration file formatting (glade),
672spreadsheets (gnumeric), or even shorter lived documents such as WebDAV where
673it is used to encode remote calls between a client and a server.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]674
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]675<h2><a name="XSLT">XSLT</a></h2>
676
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]677<p>Check <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT">the separate libxslt page</a></p>
678
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]679<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt">XSL Transformations</a>, is a language
680for transforming XML documents into other XML documents (or HTML/textual
681output).</p>
682
683<p>A separate library called libxslt is being built on top of libxml2. This
684module "libxslt" can be found in the Gnome CVS base too.</p>
685
Daniel Veillard383b1472001-01-23 11:39:52 +0000[diff] [blame]686<p>You can check the <a
Daniel Veillard6e6a6cc2001-02-15 15:55:44 +0000[diff] [blame]687href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/libxslt/FEATURES">features</a> supported
688and the progresses on the <a
Daniel Veillard82687162001-01-22 15:32:01 +0000[diff] [blame]689href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/libxslt/ChangeLog">Changelog</a></p>
690
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]691<h2>An overview of libxml architecture</h2>
692
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]693<p>Libxml is made of multiple components; some of them are optional, and most
694of the block interfaces are public. The main components are:</p>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]695<ul>
696 <li>an Input/Output layer</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]697 <li>FTP and HTTP client layers (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]698 <li>an Internationalization layer managing the encodings support</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]699 <li>a URI module</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]700 <li>the XML parser and its basic SAX interface</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]701 <li>an HTML parser using the same SAX interface (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]702 <li>a SAX tree module to build an in-memory DOM representation</li>
703 <li>a tree module to manipulate the DOM representation</li>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]704 <li>a validation module using the DOM representation (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]705 <li>an XPath module for global lookup in a DOM representation
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]706 (optional)</li>
707 <li>a debug module (optional)</li>
Daniel Veillard4540be42000-08-19 16:40:28 +0000[diff] [blame]708</ul>
709
710<p>Graphically this gives the following:</p>
711
712<p><img src="libxml.gif" alt="a graphical view of the various"></p>
713
714<p></p>
715
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]716<h2><a name="tree">The tree output</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]717
718<p>The parser returns a tree built during the document analysis. The value
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]719returned is an <strong>xmlDocPtr</strong> (i.e., a pointer to an
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]720<strong>xmlDoc</strong> structure). This structure contains information such
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]721as the file name, the document type, and a <strong>children</strong> pointer
722which is the root of the document (or more exactly the first child under the
723root which is the document). The tree is made of <strong>xmlNode</strong>s,
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]724chained in double-linked lists of siblings and with a children&lt;-&gt;parent
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]725relationship. An xmlNode can also carry properties (a chain of xmlAttr
726structures). An attribute may have a value which is a list of TEXT or
727ENTITY_REF nodes.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]728
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]729<p>Here is an example (erroneous with respect to the XML spec since there
730should be only one ELEMENT under the root):</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]731
732<p><img src="structure.gif" alt=" structure.gif "></p>
733
734<p>In the source package there is a small program (not installed by default)
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]735called <strong>xmllint</strong> which parses XML files given as argument and
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]736prints them back as parsed. This is useful for detecting errors both in XML
737code and in the XML parser itself. It has an option <strong>--debug</strong>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]738which prints the actual in-memory structure of the document; here is the
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]739result with the <a href="#example">example</a> given before:</p>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]740<pre>DOCUMENT
741version=1.0
742standalone=true
743 ELEMENT EXAMPLE
744 ATTRIBUTE prop1
745 TEXT
746 content=gnome is great
747 ATTRIBUTE prop2
748 ENTITY_REF
749 TEXT
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]750 content= linux too
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]751 ELEMENT head
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]752 ELEMENT title
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]753 TEXT
754 content=Welcome to Gnome
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]755 ELEMENT chapter
756 ELEMENT title
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]757 TEXT
758 content=The Linux adventure
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]759 ELEMENT p
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]760 TEXT
761 content=bla bla bla ...
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]762 ELEMENT image
763 ATTRIBUTE href
764 TEXT
765 content=linus.gif
766 ELEMENT p
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]767 TEXT
768 content=...</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]769
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]770<p>This should be useful for learning the internal representation model.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]771
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]772<h2><a name="interface">The SAX interface</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]773
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]774<p>Sometimes the DOM tree output is just too large to fit reasonably into
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]775memory. In that case (and if you don't expect to save back the XML document
776loaded using libxml), it's better to use the SAX interface of libxml. SAX is a
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]777<strong>callback-based interface</strong> to the parser. Before parsing, the
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]778application layer registers a customized set of callbacks which are called by
779the library as it progresses through the XML input.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]780
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]781<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]782libxml, see the <a
783href="http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/xml-sax/xml-sax.html">nice
784documentation</a>.written by <a href="mailto:james@daa.com.au">James
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]785Henstridge</a>.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]786
787<p>You can debug the SAX behaviour by using the <strong>testSAX</strong>
788program located in the gnome-xml module (it's usually not shipped in the
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]789binary packages of libxml, but you can find it in the tar source
Daniel Veillard402e8c82000-02-29 22:57:47 +0000[diff] [blame]790distribution). Here is the sequence of callbacks that would be reported by
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]791testSAX when parsing the example XML document shown earlier:</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]792<pre>SAX.setDocumentLocator()
793SAX.startDocument()
794SAX.getEntity(amp)
795SAX.startElement(EXAMPLE, prop1='gnome is great', prop2='&amp;amp; linux too')
796SAX.characters( , 3)
797SAX.startElement(head)
798SAX.characters( , 4)
799SAX.startElement(title)
800SAX.characters(Welcome to Gnome, 16)
801SAX.endElement(title)
802SAX.characters( , 3)
803SAX.endElement(head)
804SAX.characters( , 3)
805SAX.startElement(chapter)
806SAX.characters( , 4)
807SAX.startElement(title)
808SAX.characters(The Linux adventure, 19)
809SAX.endElement(title)
810SAX.characters( , 4)
811SAX.startElement(p)
812SAX.characters(bla bla bla ..., 15)
813SAX.endElement(p)
814SAX.characters( , 4)
815SAX.startElement(image, href='linus.gif')
816SAX.endElement(image)
817SAX.characters( , 4)
818SAX.startElement(p)
819SAX.characters(..., 3)
820SAX.endElement(p)
821SAX.characters( , 3)
822SAX.endElement(chapter)
823SAX.characters( , 1)
824SAX.endElement(EXAMPLE)
825SAX.endDocument()</pre>
826
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]827<p>Most of the other interfaces of libxml are based on the DOM tree-building
828facility, so nearly everything up to the end of this document presupposes the
829use of the standard DOM tree build. Note that the DOM tree itself is built by
830a set of registered default callbacks, without internal specific
831interface.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]832
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]833<h2><a name="library">The XML library interfaces</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]834
835<p>This section is directly intended to help programmers getting bootstrapped
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]836using the XML library from the C language. It is not intended to be extensive.
837I hope the automatically generated documents will provide the completeness
838required, but as a separate set of documents. The interfaces of the XML
839library are by principle low level, there is nearly zero abstraction. Those
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]840interested in a higher level API should <a href="#DOM">look at DOM</a>.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]841
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]842<p>The <a href="html/libxml-parser.html">parser interfaces for XML</a> are
843separated from the <a href="html/libxml-htmlparser.html">HTML parser
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]844interfaces</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]845
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]846<h3><a name="Invoking">Invoking the parser : the pull method</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]847
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]848<p>Usually, the first thing to do is to read an XML input. The parser accepts
849documents either from in-memory strings or from files. The functions are
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]850defined in "parser.h":</p>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]851<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]852 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseMemory(char *buffer, int size);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]853 <dd><p>Parse a null-terminated string containing the document.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]854 </dd>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]855</dl>
856<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]857 <dt><code>xmlDocPtr xmlParseFile(const char *filename);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]858 <dd><p>Parse an XML document contained in a (possibly compressed)
859 file.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]860 </dd>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]861</dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]862
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]863<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]864failure).</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]865
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]866<h3 id="Invoking1">Invoking the parser: the push method</h3>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]867
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]868<p>In order for the application to keep the control when the document is being
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]869fetched (which is common for GUI based programs) libxml provides a push
870interface, too, as of version 1.8.3. Here are the interface functions:</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]871<pre>xmlParserCtxtPtr xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(xmlSAXHandlerPtr sax,
872 void *user_data,
873 const char *chunk,
874 int size,
875 const char *filename);
876int xmlParseChunk (xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt,
877 const char *chunk,
878 int size,
879 int terminate);</pre>
880
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]881<p>and here is a simple example showing how to use the interface:</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]882<pre> FILE *f;
883
884 f = fopen(filename, "r");
885 if (f != NULL) {
886 int res, size = 1024;
887 char chars[1024];
888 xmlParserCtxtPtr ctxt;
889
890 res = fread(chars, 1, 4, f);
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]891 if (res &gt; 0) {
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]892 ctxt = xmlCreatePushParserCtxt(NULL, NULL,
893 chars, res, filename);
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]894 while ((res = fread(chars, 1, size, f)) &gt; 0) {
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]895 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, res, 0);
896 }
897 xmlParseChunk(ctxt, chars, 0, 1);
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]898 doc = ctxt-&gt;myDoc;
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]899 xmlFreeParserCtxt(ctxt);
900 }
901 }</pre>
902
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]903<p>The HTML parser embedded into libxml also has a push interface; the
904functions are just prefixed by "html" rather than "xml".</p>
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]905
906<h3 id="Invoking2">Invoking the parser: the SAX interface</h3>
907
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]908<p>The tree-building interface makes the parser memory-hungry, first loading
909the document in memory and then building the tree itself. Reading a document
910without building the tree is possible using the SAX interfaces (see SAX.h and
911<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]912Henstridge's documentation</a>). Note also that the push interface can be
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]913limited to SAX: just use the two first arguments of
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]914<code>xmlCreatePushParserCtxt()</code>.</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]915
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]916<h3><a name="Building">Building a tree from scratch</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]917
918<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]919there is a set of functions dedicated to building new elements. (These are
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]920also described in &lt;libxml/tree.h&gt;.) For example, here is a piece of code
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]921that produces the XML document used in the previous examples:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]922<pre> #include &lt;libxml/tree.h&gt;
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]923 xmlDocPtr doc;
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]924 xmlNodePtr tree, subtree;
925
926 doc = xmlNewDoc("1.0");
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]927 doc-&gt;children = xmlNewDocNode(doc, NULL, "EXAMPLE", NULL);
928 xmlSetProp(doc-&gt;children, "prop1", "gnome is great");
929 xmlSetProp(doc-&gt;children, "prop2", "&amp; linux too");
930 tree = xmlNewChild(doc-&gt;children, NULL, "head", NULL);
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]931 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "Welcome to Gnome");
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]932 tree = xmlNewChild(doc-&gt;children, NULL, "chapter", NULL);
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]933 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "title", "The Linux adventure");
934 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "p", "bla bla bla ...");
935 subtree = xmlNewChild(tree, NULL, "image", NULL);
936 xmlSetProp(subtree, "href", "linus.gif");</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]937
938<p>Not really rocket science ...</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]939
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]940<h3><a name="Traversing">Traversing the tree</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]941
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]942<p>Basically by <a href="html/libxml-tree.html">including "tree.h"</a> your
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]943code has access to the internal structure of all the elements of the tree. The
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]944names should be somewhat simple like <strong>parent</strong>,
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]945<strong>children</strong>, <strong>next</strong>, <strong>prev</strong>,
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]946<strong>properties</strong>, etc... For example, still with the previous
Daniel Veillard0142b842000-01-14 14:45:24 +0000[diff] [blame]947example:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]948<pre><code>doc-&gt;children-&gt;children-&gt;children</code></pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]949
950<p>points to the title element,</p>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]951<pre>doc-&gt;children-&gt;children-&gt;next-&gt;children-&gt;children</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]952
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]953<p>points to the text node containing the chapter title "The Linux
954adventure".</p>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]955
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]956<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]957present before the document root, so <code>doc-&gt;children</code> may point
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]958to an element which is not the document Root Element; a function
Daniel Veillard5cb5ab81999-12-21 15:35:29 +0000[diff] [blame]959<code>xmlDocGetRootElement()</code> was added for this purpose.</p>
Daniel Veillardb24054a1999-12-18 15:32:46 +0000[diff] [blame]960
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]961<h3><a name="Modifying">Modifying the tree</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]962
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]963<p>Functions are provided for reading and writing the document content. Here
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]964is an excerpt from the <a href="html/libxml-tree.html">tree API</a>:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]965<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]966 <dt><code>xmlAttrPtr xmlSetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar *name, const
967 xmlChar *value);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]968 <dd><p>This sets (or changes) an attribute carried by an ELEMENT node. The
969 value can be NULL.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]970 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]971</dl>
972<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]973 <dt><code>const xmlChar *xmlGetProp(xmlNodePtr node, const xmlChar
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]974 *name);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardc92c3042000-09-29 02:42:04 +0000[diff] [blame]975 <dd><p>This function returns a pointer to new copy of the property
976 content. Note that the user must deallocate the result.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]977 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]978</dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]979
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]980<p>Two functions are provided for reading and writing the text associated with
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]981elements:</p>
982<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]983 <dt><code>xmlNodePtr xmlStringGetNodeList(xmlDocPtr doc, const xmlChar
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]984 *value);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]985 <dd><p>This function takes an "external" string and converts it to one
986 text node or possibly to a list of entity and text nodes. All
987 non-predefined entity references like &amp;Gnome; will be stored
988 internally as entity nodes, hence the result of the function may not be
989 a single node.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]990 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]991</dl>
992<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]993 <dt><code>xmlChar *xmlNodeListGetString(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNodePtr list, int
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]994 inLine);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]995 <dd><p>This function is the inverse of
996 <code>xmlStringGetNodeList()</code>. It generates a new string
997 containing the content of the text and entity nodes. Note the extra
998 argument inLine. If this argument is set to 1, the function will expand
999 entity references. For example, instead of returning the &amp;Gnome;
1000 XML encoding in the string, it will substitute it with its value (say,
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1001 "GNU Network Object Model Environment").</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1002 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1003</dl>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1004
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1005<h3><a name="Saving">Saving a tree</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1006
1007<p>Basically 3 options are possible:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1008<dl>
Daniel Veillarddd6b3671999-09-23 22:19:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1009 <dt><code>void xmlDocDumpMemory(xmlDocPtr cur, xmlChar**mem, int
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1010 *size);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1011 <dd><p>Returns a buffer into which the document has been saved.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1012 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1013</dl>
1014<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1015 <dt><code>extern void xmlDocDump(FILE *f, xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1016 <dd><p>Dumps a document to an open file descriptor.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1017 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1018</dl>
1019<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1020 <dt><code>int xmlSaveFile(const char *filename, xmlDocPtr cur);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1021 <dd><p>Saves the document to a file. In this case, the compression
1022 interface is triggered if it has been turned on.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1023 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1024</dl>
Daniel Veillard10c6a8f1998-10-28 01:00:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1025
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1026<h3><a name="Compressio">Compression</a></h3>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1027
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1028<p>The library transparently handles compression when doing file-based
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1029accesses. The level of compression on saves can be turned on either globally
1030or individually for one file:</p>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1031<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1032 <dt><code>int xmlGetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1033 <dd><p>Gets the document compression ratio (0-9).</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1034 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1035</dl>
1036<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1037 <dt><code>void xmlSetDocCompressMode (xmlDocPtr doc, int mode);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1038 <dd><p>Sets the document compression ratio.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1039 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1040</dl>
1041<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1042 <dt><code>int xmlGetCompressMode(void);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1043 <dd><p>Gets the default compression ratio.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1044 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1045</dl>
1046<dl>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1047 <dt><code>void xmlSetCompressMode(int mode);</code></dt>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1048 <dd><p>Sets the default compression ratio.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1049 </dd>
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1050</dl>
1051
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1052<h2><a name="Entities">Entities or no entities</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1053
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1054<p>Entities in principle are similar to simple C macros. An entity defines an
1055abbreviation for a given string that you can reuse many times throughout the
1056content of your document. Entities are especially useful when a given string
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1057may occur frequently within a document, or to confine the change needed to a
1058document to a restricted area in the internal subset of the document (at the
1059beginning). Example:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1060<pre>1 &lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]10612 &lt;!DOCTYPE EXAMPLE SYSTEM "example.dtd" [
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]10623 &lt;!ENTITY xml "Extensible Markup Language"&gt;
10634 ]&gt;
10645 &lt;EXAMPLE&gt;
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]10656 &amp;xml;
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]10667 &lt;/EXAMPLE&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1067
1068<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]1069its name with '&amp;' and following it by ';' without any spaces added. There
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1070are 5 predefined entities in libxml allowing you to escape charaters with
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1071predefined meaning in some parts of the xml document content:
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1072<strong>&amp;lt;</strong> for the character '&lt;', <strong>&amp;gt;</strong>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1073for the character '&gt;', <strong>&amp;apos;</strong> for the character ''',
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1074<strong>&amp;quot;</strong> for the character '"', and
1075<strong>&amp;amp;</strong> for the character '&amp;'.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1076
1077<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]1078substitute an entity's content so that you can see the replacement text in
1079your application. Or you may prefer to keep entity references as such in the
1080content to be able to save the document back without losing this usually
1081precious information (if the user went through the pain of explicitly defining
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1082entities, he may have a a rather negative attitude if you blindly susbtitute
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1083them as saving time). The <a
Daniel Veillard9cb5ff42001-01-29 08:22:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1084href="html/libxml-parser.html#XMLSUBSTITUTEENTITIESDEFAULT">xmlSubstituteEntitiesDefault()</a>
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1085function allows you to check and change the behaviour, which is to not
1086substitute entities by default.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1087
1088<p>Here is the DOM tree built by libxml for the previous document in the
1089default case:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1090<pre>/gnome/src/gnome-xml -&gt; ./xmllint --debug test/ent1
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1091DOCUMENT
1092version=1.0
1093 ELEMENT EXAMPLE
1094 TEXT
1095 content=
1096 ENTITY_REF
1097 INTERNAL_GENERAL_ENTITY xml
1098 content=Extensible Markup Language
1099 TEXT
1100 content=</pre>
1101
1102<p>And here is the result when substituting entities:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1103<pre>/gnome/src/gnome-xml -&gt; ./tester --debug --noent test/ent1
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1104DOCUMENT
1105version=1.0
1106 ELEMENT EXAMPLE
1107 TEXT
1108 content= Extensible Markup Language</pre>
1109
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1110<p>So, entities or no entities? Basically, it depends on your use case. I
1111suggest that you keep the non-substituting default behaviour and avoid using
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1112entities in your XML document or data if you are not willing to handle the
1113entity references elements in the DOM tree.</p>
1114
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1115<p>Note that at save time libxml enforces the conversion of the predefined
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1116entities where necessary to prevent well-formedness problems, and will also
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1117transparently replace those with chars (i.e. it will not generate entity
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1118reference elements in the DOM tree or call the reference() SAX callback when
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1119finding them in the input).</p>
1120
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1121<p><span style="background-color: #FF0000">WARNING</span>: handling entities
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1122on top of the libxml SAX interface is difficult!!! If you plan to use
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1123non-predefined entities in your documents, then the learning cuvre to handle
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1124then 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]1125strongly suggest you consider using the DOM interface instead and let libxml
Daniel Veillard8c6d6af2000-08-25 17:14:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1126deal with the complexity rather than trying to do it yourself.</p>
Daniel Veillard7b9c4b72000-08-25 16:26:50 +0000[diff] [blame]1127
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1128<h2><a name="Namespaces">Namespaces</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1129
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1130<p>The libxml library implements <a
1131href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/">XML namespaces</a> support by
1132recognizing namespace contructs in the input, and does namespace lookup
1133automatically when building the DOM tree. A namespace declaration is
1134associated with an in-memory structure and all elements or attributes within
1135that namespace point to it. Hence testing the namespace is a simple and fast
1136equality operation at the user level.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1137
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1138<p>I suggest that people using libxml use a namespace, and declare it in the
1139root element of their document as the default namespace. Then they don't need
1140to 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]1141refinement and merging of data from different sources. This doesn't increase
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1142the size of the XML output significantly, but significantly increases its
1143value in the long-term. Example:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1144<pre>&lt;mydoc xmlns="http://mydoc.example.org/schemas/"&gt;
1145 &lt;elem1&gt;...&lt;/elem1&gt;
1146 &lt;elem2&gt;...&lt;/elem2&gt;
1147&lt;/mydoc&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1148
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1149<p>The namespace value has to be an absolute URL, but the URL doesn't have to
1150point to any existing resource on the Web. It will bind all the element and
1151atributes with that URL. I suggest to use an URL within a domain you control,
1152and that the URL should contain some kind of version information if possible.
1153For example, <code>"http://www.gnome.org/gnumeric/1.0/"</code> is a good
1154namespace scheme.</p>
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1155
1156<p>Then when you load a file, make sure that a namespace carrying the
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1157version-independent prefix is installed on the root element of your document,
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1158and if the version information don't match something you know, warn the user
1159and 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]1160namespace checking on the prefix value. &lt;foo:text&gt; may be exactly the
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1161same as &lt;bar:text&gt; in another document. What really matters is the URI
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1162associated with the element or the attribute, not the prefix string (which is
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1163just a shortcut for the full URI). In libxml, element and attributes have an
Daniel Veillardec303412000-03-24 13:41:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1164<code>ns</code> field pointing to an xmlNs structure detailing the namespace
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1165prefix and its URI.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1166
1167<p>@@Interfaces@@</p>
1168
1169<p>@@Examples@@</p>
1170
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1171<p>Usually people object to using namespaces together with validity checking.
1172I will try to make sure that using namespaces won't break validity checking,
1173so even if you plan to use or currently are using validation I strongly
Daniel Veillardf13e1ed2000-03-06 07:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1174suggest adding namespaces to your document. A default namespace scheme
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1175<code>xmlns="http://...."</code> should not break validity even on less
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1176flexible parsers. Using namespaces to mix and differentiate content coming
Daniel Veillard88f00ae2000-03-02 00:15:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1177from multiple DTDs will certainly break current validation schemes. I will try
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1178to provide ways to do this, but this may not be portable or standardized.</p>
1179
Daniel Veillard2f4dfc41999-09-24 14:03:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1180<h2><a name="Validation">Validation, or are you afraid of DTDs ?</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1181
1182<p>Well what is validation and what is a DTD ?</p>
1183
1184<p>Validation is the process of checking a document against a set of
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1185construction rules; a <strong>DTD</strong> (Document Type Definition) is such
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1186a set of rules.</p>
1187
1188<p>The validation process and building DTDs are the two most difficult parts
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1189of the XML life cycle. Briefly a DTD defines all the possibles element to be
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1190found within your document, what is the formal shape of your document tree (by
1191defining the allowed content of an element, either text, a regular expression
Daniel Veillard306be992000-07-03 12:38:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1192for the allowed list of children, or mixed content i.e. both text and
1193children). The DTD also defines the allowed attributes for all elements and
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1194the types of the attributes. For more detailed information, I suggest that you
Daniel Veillard81781102001-03-07 09:31:47 +0000[diff] [blame]1195read the related parts of the XML specification, the examples found under
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1196gnome-xml/test/valid/dtd and any of the large number of books available on
1197XML. The dia example in gnome-xml/test/valid should be both simple and
1198complete enough to allow you to build your own.</p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1199
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1200<p>A word of warning, building a good DTD which will fit the needs of your
1201application in the long-term is far from trivial; however, the extra level of
1202quality it can ensure is well worth the price for some sets of applications or
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1203if you already have already a DTD defined for your application field.</p>
1204
1205<p>The validation is not completely finished but in a (very IMHO) usable
1206state. Until a real validation interface is defined the way to do it is to
1207define and set the <strong>xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue</strong> external
1208variable to 1, this will of course be changed at some point:</p>
1209
1210<p>extern int xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue;</p>
1211
1212<p>...</p>
1213
1214<p>xmlDoValidityCheckingDefaultValue = 1;</p>
1215
1216<p></p>
1217
1218<p>To handle external entities, use the function
1219<strong>xmlSetExternalEntityLoader</strong>(xmlExternalEntityLoader f); to
1220link in you HTTP/FTP/Entities database library to the standard libxml
1221core.</p>
1222
1223<p>@@interfaces@@</p>
1224
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]1225<h2><a name="DOM"></a><a name="Principles">DOM Principles</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1226
1227<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/DOM/">DOM</a> stands for the <em>Document Object
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1228Model</em>; this is an API for accessing XML or HTML structured documents.
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1229Native support for DOM in Gnome is on the way (module gnome-dom), and will be
1230based on gnome-xml. This will be a far cleaner interface to manipulate XML
Daniel Veillardc08a2c61999-09-08 21:35:25 +0000[diff] [blame]1231files within Gnome since it won't expose the internal structure. DOM defines a
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1232set of IDL (or Java) interfaces allowing you to traverse and manipulate a
Daniel Veillard25940b71998-10-29 05:51:30 +0000[diff] [blame]1233document. The DOM library will allow accessing and modifying "live" documents
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1234present in other programs like this:</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1235
1236<p><img src="DOM.gif" alt=" DOM.gif "></p>
1237
1238<p>This should help greatly doing things like modifying a gnumeric spreadsheet
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1239embedded in a GWP document for example.</p>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1240
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1241<p>The current DOM implementation on top of libxml is the <a
1242href="http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gdome/">gdome Gnome module</a>, this is
1243a full DOM interface, thanks to <a href="mailto:raph@levien.com">Raph
1244Levien</a>.</p>
1245
1246<p>The gnome-dom module in the Gnome CVS base is obsolete</p>
1247
Daniel Veillard35008381999-10-25 13:15:52 +0000[diff] [blame]1248<h2><a name="Example"></a><a name="real">A real example</a></h2>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1249
1250<p>Here is a real size example, where the actual content of the application
1251data 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]1252a proposal to keep a database of jobs related to Gnome, with an XML based
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1253storage structure. Here is an <a href="gjobs.xml">XML encoded jobs
1254base</a>:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1255<pre>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
1256&lt;gjob:Helping xmlns:gjob="http://www.gnome.org/some-location"&gt;
1257 &lt;gjob:Jobs&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1258
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1259 &lt;gjob:Job&gt;
1260 &lt;gjob:Project ID="3"/&gt;
1261 &lt;gjob:Application&gt;GBackup&lt;/gjob:Application&gt;
1262 &lt;gjob:Category&gt;Development&lt;/gjob:Category&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1263
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1264 &lt;gjob:Update&gt;
1265 &lt;gjob:Status&gt;Open&lt;/gjob:Status&gt;
1266 &lt;gjob:Modified&gt;Mon, 07 Jun 1999 20:27:45 -0400 MET DST&lt;/gjob:Modified&gt;
1267 &lt;gjob:Salary&gt;USD 0.00&lt;/gjob:Salary&gt;
1268 &lt;/gjob:Update&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1269
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1270 &lt;gjob:Developers&gt;
1271 &lt;gjob:Developer&gt;
1272 &lt;/gjob:Developer&gt;
1273 &lt;/gjob:Developers&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1274
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1275 &lt;gjob:Contact&gt;
1276 &lt;gjob:Person&gt;Nathan Clemons&lt;/gjob:Person&gt;
1277 &lt;gjob:Email&gt;nathan@windsofstorm.net&lt;/gjob:Email&gt;
1278 &lt;gjob:Company&gt;
1279 &lt;/gjob:Company&gt;
1280 &lt;gjob:Organisation&gt;
1281 &lt;/gjob:Organisation&gt;
1282 &lt;gjob:Webpage&gt;
1283 &lt;/gjob:Webpage&gt;
1284 &lt;gjob:Snailmail&gt;
1285 &lt;/gjob:Snailmail&gt;
1286 &lt;gjob:Phone&gt;
1287 &lt;/gjob:Phone&gt;
1288 &lt;/gjob:Contact&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1289
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1290 &lt;gjob:Requirements&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1291 The program should be released as free software, under the GPL.
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1292 &lt;/gjob:Requirements&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1293
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1294 &lt;gjob:Skills&gt;
1295 &lt;/gjob:Skills&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1296
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1297 &lt;gjob:Details&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1298 A GNOME based system that will allow a superuser to configure
1299 compressed and uncompressed files and/or file systems to be backed
1300 up with a supported media in the system. This should be able to
1301 perform via find commands generating a list of files that are passed
1302 to tar, dd, cpio, cp, gzip, etc., to be directed to the tape machine
1303 or via operations performed on the filesystem itself. Email
1304 notification and GUI status display very important.
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1305 &lt;/gjob:Details&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1306
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1307 &lt;/gjob:Job&gt;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1308
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1309 &lt;/gjob:Jobs&gt;
1310&lt;/gjob:Helping&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1311
1312<p>While loading the XML file into an internal DOM tree is a matter of calling
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1313only a couple of functions, browsing the tree to gather the ata and generate
1314the internal structures is harder, and more error prone.</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1315
1316<p>The suggested principle is to be tolerant with respect to the input
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1317structure. For example, the ordering of the attributes is not significant, the
1318XML specification is clear about it. It's also usually a good idea not to
1319depend on the order of the children of a given node, unless it really makes
1320things harder. Here is some code to parse the information for a person:</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1321<pre>/*
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1322 * A person record
1323 */
1324typedef struct person {
1325 char *name;
1326 char *email;
1327 char *company;
1328 char *organisation;
1329 char *smail;
1330 char *webPage;
1331 char *phone;
1332} person, *personPtr;
1333
1334/*
1335 * And the code needed to parse it
1336 */
1337personPtr parsePerson(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) {
1338 personPtr ret = NULL;
1339
1340DEBUG("parsePerson\n");
1341 /*
1342 * allocate the struct
1343 */
1344 ret = (personPtr) malloc(sizeof(person));
1345 if (ret == NULL) {
1346 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n");
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1347 return(NULL);
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1348 }
1349 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(person));
1350
1351 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1352 cur = cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1353 while (cur != NULL) {
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1354 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Person")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1355 ret-&gt;name = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1356 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Email")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1357 ret-&gt;email = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1358 cur = cur-&gt;next;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1359 }
1360
1361 return(ret);
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1362}</pre>
1363
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1364<p>Here are a couple of things to notice:</p>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1365<ul>
Daniel Veillard91e9d582001-02-26 07:31:12 +0000[diff] [blame]1366 <li>Usually a recursive parsing style is the more convenient one: XML data
1367 is by nature subject to repetitive constructs and usually exibits highly
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1368 stuctured patterns.</li>
1369 <li>The two arguments of type <em>xmlDocPtr</em> and <em>xmlNsPtr</em>, i.e.
1370 the pointer to the global XML document and the namespace reserved to the
1371 application. Document wide information are needed for example to decode
1372 entities and it's a good coding practice to define a namespace for your
1373 application set of data and test that the element and attributes you're
1374 analyzing actually pertains to your application space. This is done by a
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1375 simple equality test (cur-&gt;ns == ns).</li>
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1376 <li>To retrieve text and attributes value, you can use the function
1377 <em>xmlNodeListGetString</em> to gather all the text and entity reference
1378 nodes generated by the DOM output and produce an single text string.</li>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1379</ul>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1380
1381<p>Here is another piece of code used to parse another level of the
1382structure:</p>
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1383<pre>#include &lt;libxml/tree.h&gt;
Daniel Veillard361d8452000-04-03 19:48:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1384/*
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1385 * a Description for a Job
1386 */
1387typedef struct job {
1388 char *projectID;
1389 char *application;
1390 char *category;
1391 personPtr contact;
1392 int nbDevelopers;
1393 personPtr developers[100]; /* using dynamic alloc is left as an exercise */
1394} job, *jobPtr;
1395
1396/*
1397 * And the code needed to parse it
1398 */
1399jobPtr parseJob(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) {
1400 jobPtr ret = NULL;
1401
1402DEBUG("parseJob\n");
1403 /*
1404 * allocate the struct
1405 */
1406 ret = (jobPtr) malloc(sizeof(job));
1407 if (ret == NULL) {
1408 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n");
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1409 return(NULL);
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1410 }
1411 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(job));
1412
1413 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1414 cur = cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1415 while (cur != NULL) {
1416
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1417 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Project")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns)) {
1418 ret-&gt;projectID = xmlGetProp(cur, "ID");
1419 if (ret-&gt;projectID == NULL) {
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1420 fprintf(stderr, "Project has no ID\n");
1421 }
1422 }
Daniel Veillard60979bd2000-07-10 12:17:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1423 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Application")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1424 ret-&gt;application = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1425 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Category")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1426 ret-&gt;category = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur-&gt;xmlChildrenNode, 1);
1427 if ((!strcmp(cur-&gt;name, "Contact")) &amp;&amp; (cur-&gt;ns == ns))
1428 ret-&gt;contact = parsePerson(doc, ns, cur);
1429 cur = cur-&gt;next;
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1430 }
1431
1432 return(ret);
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1433}</pre>
Daniel Veillard14fff061999-06-22 21:49:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1434
Daniel Veillardec70e912001-02-26 20:10:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1435<p>Once you are used to it, writing this kind of code is quite simple, but
1436boring. Ultimately, it could be possble to write stubbers taking either C data
1437structure definitions, a set of XML examples or an XML DTD and produce the
1438code needed to import and export the content between C data and XML storage.
1439This is left as an exercise to the reader :-)</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1440
Daniel Veillard6f0adb52000-07-03 11:41:26 +0000[diff] [blame]1441<p>Feel free to use <a href="example/gjobread.c">the code for the full C
1442parsing example</a> as a template, it is also available with Makefile in the
1443Gnome CVS base under gnome-xml/example</p>
Daniel Veillardb05deb71999-08-10 19:04:08 +0000[diff] [blame]1444
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1445<h2><a name="Contributi">Contributions</a></h2>
1446<ul>
Daniel Veillard851c59c2000-11-24 16:06:22 +0000[diff] [blame]1447 <li><a href="mailto:ari@lusis.org">Ari Johnson</a> provides a C++ wrapper
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1448 for libxml:
1449 <p>Website: <a
1450 href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/</a></p>
1451 <p>Download: <a
1452 href="http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/libxml++.tar.gz">http://lusis.org/~ari/xml++/libxml++.tar.gz</a></p>
1453 </li>
1454 <li><a href="mailto:doolin@cs.utk.edu">David Doolin</a> provides a
1455 precompiled Windows version
1456 <p><a
1457 href="http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~doolin/code/libxmlwin32/">http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~doolin/code/libxmlwin32/</a></p>
1458 </li>
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame^]1459 <li><a
1460 href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2001-March/msg00014.html">Matt
1461 Sergeant</a> developped <a
1462 href="http://axkit.org/download/">XML::LibXSLT</a>, a perl wrapper for
1463 libxml2/libxslt as part of the <a href="http://axkit.com/">AxKit XML
1464 application server</a></li>
Daniel Veillard3f6f7f62000-06-30 17:58:25 +0000[diff] [blame]1465 <li><a href="mailto:fnatter@gmx.net">Felix Natter</a> provided <a
1466 href="libxml-doc.el">an emacs module</a> to lookup libxml functions
1467 documentation</li>
Daniel Veillardc310d562000-06-23 18:32:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1468 <li><a href="mailto:sherwin@nlm.nih.gov">Ziying Sherwin</a> provided <a
1469 href="http://xmlsoft.org/messages/0488.html">man pages</a> (not yet
1470 integrated in the distribution)</li>
1471</ul>
1472
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1473<p></p>
1474
Daniel Veillard33a67802001-03-07 09:44:02 +0000[diff] [blame]1475<p><a href="mailto:Daniel.Veillard@imag.fr">Daniel Veillard</a></p>
Daniel Veillardc8eab3a1999-09-04 18:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1476
Daniel Veillarde356c282001-03-10 12:32:04 +0000[diff] [blame^]1477<p>$Id: xml.html,v 1.73 2001/03/07 09:44:02 veillard Exp $</p>
Daniel Veillardccb09631998-10-27 06:21:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1478</body>
1479</html>