mxml/doc/docset.intro

<h2 class='title'><a name='INTRODUCTION'>Introduction</a></h2>

<p>Mini-XML is a small XML parsing library that you can use to read XML and
XML-like data files in your application without requiring large non-standard
libraries.  Mini-XML only requires an ANSI C compatible compiler (GCC works,
as do most vendors' ANSI C compilers) and a "make" program.</p>

<p>Mini-XML provides the following functionality:</p>

<ul>

	<li>Reading of UTF-8 and UTF-16 and writing of UTF-8 encoded XML files
	and strings.</li>

	<li>Data is stored in a linked-list tree structure, preserving the XML
	data hierarchy.</li>

	<li>Supports arbitrary element names, attributes, and attribute values
	with no preset limits, just available memory.</li>

	<li>Supports integer, real, opaque ("cdata"), and text data types in
	"leaf" nodes.</li>

	<li>Functions for creating, indexing, and managing trees of data.</li>

	<li>"Find" and "walk" functions for easily locating and navigating trees
	of data.</li>

</ul>

<p>Mini-XML doesn't do validation or other types of processing on the data based
upon schema files or other sources of definition information, nor does it
support character entities other than those required by the XML
specification.</p>

<h2 class='title'><a name='USING'>Using Mini-XML</a></h2>

<p>Mini-XML provides a single header file which you include:</p>

<pre class='example'>
#include &lt;mxml.h&gt;
</pre>

<p>Nodes are defined by the "<a href='#mxml_node_s'>mxml_node_t</a>" structure;
the "type" member defines the node type (element, integer, opaque, real, or
text) which determines which value you want to look at in the "value" union.
New nodes can be created using the
"<a href='#mxmlNewElement'>mxmlNewElement()</a>",
"<a href='#mxmlNewInteger'>mxmlNewInteger()</a>",
"<a href='#mxmlNewOpaque'>mxmlNewOpaque()</a>",
"<a href='#mxmlNewReal'>mxmlNewReal()</a>", and
"<a href='#mxmlNewText'>mxmlNewText()</a>" functions. Only elements can have
child nodes, and the top node must be an element, usually "?xml".</p>

<p>You load an XML file using the "mxmlLoadFile()" function:</p>

<pre class='example'>
FILE *fp;
mxml_node_t *tree;

fp = fopen("filename.xml", "r");
tree = mxmlLoadFile(NULL, fp, MXML_NO_CALLBACK);
fclose(fp);
</pre>

<p>Similarly, you save an XML file using the
"<a href='#mxmlSaveFile'>mxmlSaveFile()</a>" function:

<pre class='example'>
FILE *fp;
mxml_node_t *tree;

fp = fopen("filename.xml", "w");
mxmlSaveFile(tree, fp, MXML_NO_CALLBACK);
fclose(fp);
</pre>

<p>The "<a href='#mxmlLoadString'>mxmlLoadString()</a>",
"<a href='#mxmlSaveAllocString'>mxmlSaveAllocString()</a>", and
"<a href='#mxmlSaveString'>mxmlSaveString()</a>" functions load XML node trees
from and save XML node trees to strings:</p>

<pre class='example'>
char buffer[8192];
char *ptr;
mxml_node_t *tree;

...
tree = mxmlLoadString(NULL, buffer, MXML_NO_CALLBACK);

...
mxmlSaveString(tree, buffer, sizeof(buffer),
	       MXML_NO_CALLBACK);

...
ptr = mxmlSaveAllocString(tree, MXML_NO_CALLBACK);
</pre>

<p>You can find a named element/node using the
"<a href='#mxmlFindElement'>mxmlFindElement()</a>" function:</p>

<pre class='example'>
mxml_node_t *node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, "name",
				    "attr", "value",
				    MXML_DESCEND);
</pre>

<p>The "name", "attr", and "value" arguments can be passed as
<code>NULL</code> to act as wildcards, e.g.:</p>

<pre class='example'>
/* Find the first "a" element */
node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, "a", NULL, NULL,
		       MXML_DESCEND);

/* Find the first "a" element with "href" attribute */
node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, "a", "href", NULL,
		       MXML_DESCEND);

/* Find the first "a" element with "href" to a URL */
node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, "a", "href",
		       "http://www.easysw.com/~mike/mxml/",
		       MXML_DESCEND);

/* Find the first element with a "src" attribute*/
node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, NULL, "src", NULL,
		       MXML_DESCEND);

/* Find the first element with a "src" = "foo.jpg" */
node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, NULL, "src",
		       "foo.jpg", MXML_DESCEND);
</pre>

<p>You can also iterate with the same function:</p>

<pre class='example'>
mxml_node_t *node;

for (node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, "name", NULL,
			    NULL, MXML_DESCEND);
     node != NULL;
     node = mxmlFindElement(node, tree, "name", NULL,
			    NULL, MXML_DESCEND))
{
  ... do something ...
}
</pre>

<p>Finally, once you are done with the XML data, use the
"<a href='#mxmlDelete'>mxmlDelete()</a>" function to recursively free the
memory that is used for a particular node or the entire tree:</p>

<pre class='example'>
mxmlDelete(tree);
</pre>