example.html
1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="/favicon.ico" /><style type="text/css"> 4 TD {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica} 5 BODY {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica; margin-top: 2em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 0em} 6 H1 {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica} 7 H2 {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica} 8 H3 {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica} 9 A:link, A:visited, A:active { text-decoration: underline } 10 </style><title>A real example</title></head><body bgcolor="#8b7765" text="#000000" link="#a06060" vlink="#000000"><table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center"><tr><td width="120"><a href="http://swpat.ffii.org/"><img src="epatents.png" alt="Action against software 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href="http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/dist/XML-LibXML">Perl bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://libxmlplusplus.sourceforge.net/">C++ bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-xmlphp.php#Heading4">PHP bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/libxml2-pas/">Pascal bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://libxml.rubyforge.org/">Ruby bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://tclxml.sourceforge.net/">Tcl bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml2">Bug Tracker</a></li></ul></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td><td valign="top" bgcolor="#8b7765"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%"><tr><td><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%" bgcolor="#000000"><tr><td><table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" width="100%"><tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd"><p>Here is a real size example, where the actual content of the application 11 data is not kept in the DOM tree but uses internal structures. It is based on 12 a proposal to keep a database of jobs related to Gnome, with an XML based 13 storage structure. Here is an <a href="gjobs.xml">XML encoded jobs 14 base</a>:</p><pre><?xml version="1.0"?> 15 <gjob:Helping xmlns:gjob="http://www.gnome.org/some-location"> 16 <gjob:Jobs> 17 18 <gjob:Job> 19 <gjob:Project ID="3"/> 20 <gjob:Application>GBackup</gjob:Application> 21 <gjob:Category>Development</gjob:Category> 22 23 <gjob:Update> 24 <gjob:Status>Open</gjob:Status> 25 <gjob:Modified>Mon, 07 Jun 1999 20:27:45 -0400 MET DST</gjob:Modified> 26 <gjob:Salary>USD 0.00</gjob:Salary> 27 </gjob:Update> 28 29 <gjob:Developers> 30 <gjob:Developer> 31 </gjob:Developer> 32 </gjob:Developers> 33 34 <gjob:Contact> 35 <gjob:Person>Nathan Clemons</gjob:Person> 36 <gjob:Email>nathan@windsofstorm.net</gjob:Email> 37 <gjob:Company> 38 </gjob:Company> 39 <gjob:Organisation> 40 </gjob:Organisation> 41 <gjob:Webpage> 42 </gjob:Webpage> 43 <gjob:Snailmail> 44 </gjob:Snailmail> 45 <gjob:Phone> 46 </gjob:Phone> 47 </gjob:Contact> 48 49 <gjob:Requirements> 50 The program should be released as free software, under the GPL. 51 </gjob:Requirements> 52 53 <gjob:Skills> 54 </gjob:Skills> 55 56 <gjob:Details> 57 A GNOME based system that will allow a superuser to configure 58 compressed and uncompressed files and/or file systems to be backed 59 up with a supported media in the system. This should be able to 60 perform via find commands generating a list of files that are passed 61 to tar, dd, cpio, cp, gzip, etc., to be directed to the tape machine 62 or via operations performed on the filesystem itself. Email 63 notification and GUI status display very important. 64 </gjob:Details> 65 66 </gjob:Job> 67 68 </gjob:Jobs> 69 </gjob:Helping></pre><p>While loading the XML file into an internal DOM tree is a matter of 70 calling only a couple of functions, browsing the tree to gather the data and 71 generate the internal structures is harder, and more error prone.</p><p>The suggested principle is to be tolerant with respect to the input 72 structure. For example, the ordering of the attributes is not significant, 73 the XML specification is clear about it. It's also usually a good idea not to 74 depend on the order of the children of a given node, unless it really makes 75 things harder. Here is some code to parse the information for a person:</p><pre>/* 76 * A person record 77 */ 78 typedef struct person { 79 char *name; 80 char *email; 81 char *company; 82 char *organisation; 83 char *smail; 84 char *webPage; 85 char *phone; 86 } person, *personPtr; 87 88 /* 89 * And the code needed to parse it 90 */ 91 personPtr parsePerson(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) { 92 personPtr ret = NULL; 93 94 DEBUG("parsePerson\n"); 95 /* 96 * allocate the struct 97 */ 98 ret = (personPtr) malloc(sizeof(person)); 99 if (ret == NULL) { 100 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n"); 101 return(NULL); 102 } 103 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(person)); 104 105 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */ 106 cur = cur->xmlChildrenNode; 107 while (cur != NULL) { 108 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Person")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 109 ret->name = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur->xmlChildrenNode, 1); 110 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Email")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 111 ret->email = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur->xmlChildrenNode, 1); 112 cur = cur->next; 113 } 114 115 return(ret); 116 }</pre><p>Here are a couple of things to notice:</p><ul> 117 <li>Usually a recursive parsing style is the more convenient one: XML data 118 is by nature subject to repetitive constructs and usually exhibits highly 119 structured patterns.</li> 120 <li>The two arguments of type <em>xmlDocPtr</em> and <em>xmlNsPtr</em>, 121 i.e. the pointer to the global XML document and the namespace reserved to 122 the application. Document wide information are needed for example to 123 decode entities and it's a good coding practice to define a namespace for 124 your application set of data and test that the element and attributes 125 you're analyzing actually pertains to your application space. This is 126 done by a simple equality test (cur->ns == ns).</li> 127 <li>To retrieve text and attributes value, you can use the function 128 <em>xmlNodeListGetString</em> to gather all the text and entity reference 129 nodes generated by the DOM output and produce an single text string.</li> 130 </ul><p>Here is another piece of code used to parse another level of the 131 structure:</p><pre>#include <libxml/tree.h> 132 /* 133 * a Description for a Job 134 */ 135 typedef struct job { 136 char *projectID; 137 char *application; 138 char *category; 139 personPtr contact; 140 int nbDevelopers; 141 personPtr developers[100]; /* using dynamic alloc is left as an exercise */ 142 } job, *jobPtr; 143 144 /* 145 * And the code needed to parse it 146 */ 147 jobPtr parseJob(xmlDocPtr doc, xmlNsPtr ns, xmlNodePtr cur) { 148 jobPtr ret = NULL; 149 150 DEBUG("parseJob\n"); 151 /* 152 * allocate the struct 153 */ 154 ret = (jobPtr) malloc(sizeof(job)); 155 if (ret == NULL) { 156 fprintf(stderr,"out of memory\n"); 157 return(NULL); 158 } 159 memset(ret, 0, sizeof(job)); 160 161 /* We don't care what the top level element name is */ 162 cur = cur->xmlChildrenNode; 163 while (cur != NULL) { 164 165 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Project")) && (cur->ns == ns)) { 166 ret->projectID = xmlGetProp(cur, "ID"); 167 if (ret->projectID == NULL) { 168 fprintf(stderr, "Project has no ID\n"); 169 } 170 } 171 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Application")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 172 ret->application = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur->xmlChildrenNode, 1); 173 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Category")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 174 ret->category = xmlNodeListGetString(doc, cur->xmlChildrenNode, 1); 175 if ((!strcmp(cur->name, "Contact")) && (cur->ns == ns)) 176 ret->contact = parsePerson(doc, ns, cur); 177 cur = cur->next; 178 } 179 180 return(ret); 181 }</pre><p>Once you are used to it, writing this kind of code is quite simple, but 182 boring. Ultimately, it could be possible to write stubbers taking either C 183 data structure definitions, a set of XML examples or an XML DTD and produce 184 the code needed to import and export the content between C data and XML 185 storage. This is left as an exercise to the reader :-)</p><p>Feel free to use <a href="example/gjobread.c">the code for the full C 186 parsing example</a> as a template, it is also available with Makefile in the 187 Gnome SVN base under libxml2/example</p><p><a href="bugs.html">Daniel Veillard</a></p></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></body></html>