ICI Modules: xml

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Modules by name : by type

Overview

The xml module provides two major facilities. Firsly it is an interface to James Clark's expat XML parser. This is a non-validating XML parser with a SAX-style programming interface. The ICI interface presents a similar interface to the C API and can be considered an ICI SAX implementation.

On top of the direct expat interface a set of functions is provided for reading a complete XML stream into memory. The stream is represented using ICI objects with the XML's structure maintained in the data structure so it is possible to output what has been read. Functions are provided to manipulate this in-memory representation and this can be thought of as a DOM-like interface. It is not however an implementation of the DOM as specified by the W3C but uses this structure.

Interface

The lowest level interface provides direct access to the expat callback-based interface.

• xml.ParserCreate - create a new XML parser object

• xml.SetUserData - set a parser object's user-defined data

• xml.GetUserData - get a parser's user-defined data

• xml.SetElementHandler - set a parser's element callbacks

• xml.SetCharacterDataHandler - set a parser's character data callback

• xml.SetDefaultHandler - set a parser's default callback

• xml.SetProcessingInstructionHandler - set a parser's processing instruction callback

• xml.Parse - parse input

• xml.GetErrorCode - return error code

• xml.ErrorString - return error message

• xml.GetCurrentLineNumber - return input line number

• xml.GetCurrentColumnNumber - return position within current line

• xml.GetCurrentByteIndex - return current input byte count

• xml.SetBase - set the base URL for the parse

In-memory Interface

This interface uses the above functions to read XML streams into memory and provides functions to traverse the document structure and perform various manipulations.

• xml.read - read a document into memory

• xml.write - write a document to a stream

• xml.process - traverse the document calling functions on matching nodes

• xml.traverse - traverse the document calling user functions

• xml.tag_of - return an element's tag

• xml.id_of - return the internal element unique identifier

• xml.elements_of - return an array of sub-elements

• xml.attributes_of - return an element's attributes

• xml.parent_of - return an element's parent

• xml.siblings_of - return an array of the element's siblings

• xml.children_of - return an array of child elements

• xml.text_of - return the element's character data

• xml.empty_element - create an empty element

• xml.set_element_tag - set an element's tag

• xml.add_element - add an element

• xml.find_by_tag - find an element using its tag

• xml.is_element - is a sub-element a child

• xml.is_text - is a sub-element character data