maxdz Software GmbH

mdz_xml Overview and Reference

Please refer to mdz_xml Wiki for API details.

mdz_xml Advantages

1. High portability: the whole code conforms to ANSI C 89/90 Standard.

2. Little dependencies: basically, mdz_xml functions are only dependent on standard C-library memory-management/access functions. It means you can use library in your code without any further dependencies except standard platform libraries/APIs.

3. Very fast: Parsing of XML-document is ca. 40% faster than "pugiXML" (which is considered one of fastest XML-parsers) needs. And is ca. 20 times faster than of "MSXML" from Microsoft.

4. Parsing of very large XML-documents: basically, for 64-bit version the only limitation is your available RAM. Still the parser uses memory very effectively, thus parsing of very large files (we mean 2 GB large and bigger files here) is still possible using mdz_xml with a 50% less RAM-consumption than "pugiXML" or "MSXML" (which are very memory-effective too).

5. Parse error position: you are getting position of invalid (non-parsed) character in XML-document if there is parse error.

6. Flexibility: you can parse read-only XML-documents. You can parse writable XML-documents even faster and with less memory-consumption than read-only parse. You can parse files - our file reading is very fast too.

7. Navigation: you can navigate through XML DOM-structure to collect necessary information from elements/children, attributes or texts.

8. Control: you can allow/disallow characters to be parsed in element names, attributes, texts, etc. Parser itself handles <?..?> instructions, <!--...--> comments, and mixed content

mdz_xml General Information and Functions

mdz_xml is a library for parsing of XML-documents and creating DOM-structure

Parser processes only ASCII/ANSI single-byte XML-documents. There are following limitations currently:

- "Process Instructions" (instructions inside ) - are parsed but not processed and not inserted in DOM
- Comments (XML-code inside ) - is parsed but not processed and not inserted in DOM
- Mixed content is supported

- Following characters are treated as space-characters: '\n' (aka LF, code 0x0a), '\r' (aka CR, code 0x0d), '\t' (aka TAB, code 0x09), ' ' (aka SPACE, code 0x20)

- Element name may start with following characters: ':', '_', [A..Z], [a..z]
- Element name may contain following characters: ':', '_', '-', '.', [A..Z], [a..z], [0..9]
- Restrictions to element name also apply to attribute name

- Element text may contain every ANSI/ASCII character except: 0 ('\0', code 0x00) and '<'
- Restrictions to element text also apply to attribute value

- CDATA Sections are not parsed and not processed (parsing error will be returned)

- Whitespaces in element text/attribute value are preserved

Library init/uninit functions:

mdz_xml_init
mdz_xml_uninit

Parser create/destroy functions:

mdz_xml_create
mdz_xml_destroy

Parse functions:

mdz_xml_parse
mdz_xml_parseWritable
mdz_xml_parseFile

Service functions:

mdz_xml_allowLetter
mdz_xml_isAllowedLetter
mdz_xml_setParseCallback
mdz_xml_removeParseCallback
mdz_xml_getTotalElements

Navigation functions:

mdz_xml_getElement
mdz_xml_getAttribute

mdz_xml_init

Initializes ansi library. This function should be called before any other function of the library.

mdz_bool mdz_xml_init(const unsigned long* pFirstNameHash, const unsigned long* pLastNameHash, const unsigned long* pEmailHash, const unsigned long* pLicenseHash);

mdz_xml_uninit

Un-initializes ansi library and frees corresponding memory allocations.

void mdz_xml_uninit(void);

mdz_xml_create

Create XML-parser instance.

struct mdz_Xml* mdz_xml_create(void);

mdz_xml_destroy

Destroy XML-parser instance, including underlying data.

void mdz_xml_destroy(const struct mdz_Xml* pXml);

mdz_xml_parse

Read-only parsing XML-document under pcText with length nTextLength. After successful parsing, DOM-structure will be built with a root at mdz_Xml.m_pRootElement.

mdz_bool mdz_xml_parse(const struct mdz_Xml* pXml, const char* pcText, size_t nTextLength);

mdz_xml_parseWritable

Writable parsing XML-document under pcText with length nTextLength. During this parse XML-document can be modified (without losing XML-information), to significantly decrease in-memory size of DOM-structure comparing to mdz_xml_parse() result.

mdz_bool mdz_xml_parseWritable(const struct mdz_Xml* pXml, char* pcText, size_t nTextLength);

mdz_xml_parseFile

Reads from file and makes writable parsing of XML-document.

mdz_bool mdz_xml_parseFile(const struct mdz_Xml* pXml, const char* pcFileName, mdz_bool bParseWritable);

mdz_xml_allowLetter

Allow/disallow letter cLetter to be used in text, defined by enTextType. Please note: there are no checks on letters - thus invalid settings (like allowing '<' in element name) may break parsing functionality.
This function is applied to global settings and used by all parser instances.

mdz_bool mdz_xml_allowLetter(enum mdz_xml_text_type enTextType, unsigned char cLetter, mdz_bool bAllow);

mdz_xml_isAllowedLetter

Check if the letter cLetter is allowed to be used in text, defined by enTextType.

mdz_bool mdz_xml_isAllowedLetter(enum mdz_xml_text_type enTextType, unsigned char cLetter);

mdz_xml_setParseCallback

Set callback for reporting percent of XML-document processed during parsing.

mdz_bool mdz_xml_setParseCallback(const struct mdz_Xml* pXml, mdz_ProgressCallbackFunc pCallbackFunc, unsigned char nPercentProCall);

mdz_xml_removeParseCallback

Remove callback set in mdz_xml_setParseCallback().

mdz_bool mdz_xml_removeParseCallback(const struct mdz_Xml* pXml);

mdz_xml_getTotalElements

Get total number of parsed XML-elements (may be used for progress-reporting services)

size_t mdz_xml_getTotalElements(const struct mdz_Xml* pXml);

mdz_xml_getElement

Get Element (or Text for XML with mixed-content) from parser.
This Element can be comment (pElement->m_enType is MDZ_XML_COMMENT) or CDATA (pElement->m_enType is MDZ_XML_DATA)

mdz_bool mdz_xml_getElement(const struct mdz_Xml* pXml, const void* pWhereElement, struct mdz_XmlElement* pElement);

mdz_xml_getAttribute

Get element attribute from parser.

mdz_bool mdz_xml_getAttribute(const struct mdz_Xml* pXml, const void* pWhereElement, size_t nAttributeIndex, struct mdz_XmlAttribute* pAttribute);