Provided by: libxml-libxml-perl_2.0108+dfsg-1ubuntu0.2_amd64 bug

NAME

       XML::LibXML::Parser - Parsing XML Data with XML::LibXML

SYNOPSIS

         use XML::LibXML '1.70';

         # Parser constructor

         $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
         $parser = XML::LibXML->new(option=>value, ...);
         $parser = XML::LibXML->new({option=>value, ...});

         # Parsing XML

         $dom = XML::LibXML->load_xml(
             location => $file_or_url
             # parser options ...
           );
         $dom = XML::LibXML->load_xml(
             string => $xml_string
             # parser options ...
           );
         $dom = XML::LibXML->load_xml(
             string => (\$xml_string)
             # parser options ...
           );
         $dom = XML::LibXML->load_xml({
             IO => $perl_file_handle
             # parser options ...
           );
         $dom = $parser->load_xml(...);

         # Parsing HTML

         $dom = XML::LibXML->load_html(...);
         $dom = $parser->load_html(...);

         # Parsing well-balanced XML chunks

         $fragment = $parser->parse_balanced_chunk( $wbxmlstring, $encoding );

         # Processing XInclude

         $parser->process_xincludes( $doc );
         $parser->processXIncludes( $doc );

         # Old-style parser interfaces

         $doc = $parser->parse_file( $xmlfilename );
         $doc = $parser->parse_fh( $io_fh );
         $doc = $parser->parse_string( $xmlstring);
         $doc = $parser->parse_html_file( $htmlfile, \%opts );
         $doc = $parser->parse_html_fh( $io_fh, \%opts );
         $doc = $parser->parse_html_string( $htmlstring, \%opts );

         # Push parser

         $parser->parse_chunk($string, $terminate);
         $parser->init_push();
         $parser->push(@data);
         $doc = $parser->finish_push( $recover );

         # Set/query parser options

         $parser->option_exists($name);
         $parser->get_option($name);
         $parser->set_option($name,$value);
         $parser->set_options({$name=>$value,...});

         # XML catalogs

         $parser->load_catalog( $catalog_file );

PARSING

       An XML document is read into a data structure such as a DOM tree by a piece of software,
       called a parser. XML::LibXML currently provides four different parser interfaces:

       •   A DOM Pull-Parser

       •   A DOM Push-Parser

       •   A SAX Parser

       •   A DOM based SAX Parser.

   Creating a Parser Instance
       XML::LibXML provides an OO interface to the libxml2 parser functions. Thus you have to
       create a parser instance before you can parse any XML data.

       new
             $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
             $parser = XML::LibXML->new(option=>value, ...);
             $parser = XML::LibXML->new({option=>value, ...});

           Create a new XML and HTML parser instance. Each parser instance holds default values
           for various parser options. Optionally, one can pass a hash reference or a list of
           option => value pairs to set a different default set of options.  Unless specified
           otherwise, the options "load_ext_dtd", and "expand_entities" are set to 1. See "Parser
           Options" for a list of libxml2 parser's options.

   DOM Parser
       One of the common parser interfaces of XML::LibXML is the DOM parser. This parser reads
       XML data into a DOM like data structure, so each tag can get accessed and transformed.

       XML::LibXML's DOM parser is not only capable to parse XML data, but also (strict) HTML
       files. There are three ways to parse documents - as a string, as a Perl filehandle, or as
       a filename/URL. The return value from each is a XML::LibXML::Document object, which is a
       DOM object.

       All of the functions listed below will throw an exception if the document is invalid. To
       prevent this causing your program exiting, wrap the call in an eval{} block

       load_xml
             $dom = XML::LibXML->load_xml(
                 location => $file_or_url
                 # parser options ...
               );
             $dom = XML::LibXML->load_xml(
                 string => $xml_string
                 # parser options ...
               );
             $dom = XML::LibXML->load_xml(
                 string => (\$xml_string)
                 # parser options ...
               );
             $dom = XML::LibXML->load_xml({
                 IO => $perl_file_handle
                 # parser options ...
               );
             $dom = $parser->load_xml(...);

           This function is available since XML::LibXML 1.70. It provides easy to use interface
           to the XML parser that parses given file (or URL), string, or input stream to a DOM
           tree. The arguments can be passed in a HASH reference or as name => value pairs. The
           function can be called as a class method or an object method. In both cases it
           internally creates a new parser instance passing the specified parser options; if
           called as an object method, it clones the original parser (preserving its settings)
           and additionally applies the specified options to the new parser. See the constructor
           "new" and "Parser Options" for more information.

       load_html
             $dom = XML::LibXML->load_html(...);
             $dom = $parser->load_html(...);

           This function is available since XML::LibXML 1.70. It has the same usage as
           "load_xml", providing interface to the HTML parser. See "load_xml" for more
           information.

       Parsing HTML may cause problems, especially if the ampersand ('&') is used.  This is a
       common problem if HTML code is parsed that contains links to CGI-scripts. Such links cause
       the parser to throw errors. In such cases libxml2 still parses the entire document as
       there was no error, but the error causes XML::LibXML to stop the parsing process. However,
       the document is not lost.  Such HTML documents should be parsed using the recover flag. By
       default recovering is deactivated.

       The functions described above are implemented to parse well formed documents.  In some
       cases a program gets well balanced XML instead of well formed documents (e.g. an XML
       fragment from a database). With XML::LibXML it is not required to wrap such fragments in
       the code, because XML::LibXML is capable even to parse well balanced XML fragments.

       parse_balanced_chunk
             $fragment = $parser->parse_balanced_chunk( $wbxmlstring, $encoding );

           This function parses a well balanced XML string into a XML::LibXML::DocumentFragment.
           The first arguments contains the input string, the optional second argument can be
           used to specify character encoding of the input (UTF-8 is assumed by default).

       parse_xml_chunk
           This is the old name of parse_balanced_chunk(). Because it may causes confusion with
           the push parser interface, this function should not be used anymore.

       By default XML::LibXML does not process XInclude tags within an XML Document (see options
       section below). XML::LibXML allows one to post-process a document to expand XInclude tags.

       process_xincludes
             $parser->process_xincludes( $doc );

           After a document is parsed into a DOM structure, you may want to expand the documents
           XInclude tags. This function processes the given document structure and expands all
           XInclude tags (or throws an error) by using the flags and callbacks of the given
           parser instance.

           Note that the resulting Tree contains some extra nodes (of type XML_XINCLUDE_START and
           XML_XINCLUDE_END) after successfully processing the document. These nodes indicate
           where data was included into the original tree.  if the document is serialized, these
           extra nodes will not show up.

           Remember: A Document with processed XIncludes differs from the original document after
           serialization, because the original XInclude tags will not get restored!

           If the parser flag "expand_xincludes" is set to 1, you need not to post process the
           parsed document.

       processXIncludes
             $parser->processXIncludes( $doc );

           This is an alias to process_xincludes, but through a JAVA like function name.

       parse_file
             $doc = $parser->parse_file( $xmlfilename );

           This function parses an XML document from a file or network; $xmlfilename can be
           either a filename or an URL. Note that for parsing files, this function is the fastest
           choice, about 6-8 times faster then parse_fh().

       parse_fh
             $doc = $parser->parse_fh( $io_fh );

           parse_fh() parses a IOREF or a subclass of IO::Handle.

           Because the data comes from an open handle, libxml2's parser does not know about the
           base URI of the document. To set the base URI one should use parse_fh() as follows:

             my $doc = $parser->parse_fh( $io_fh, $baseuri );

       parse_string
             $doc = $parser->parse_string( $xmlstring);

           This function is similar to parse_fh(), but it parses an XML document that is
           available as a single string in memory, or alternatively as a reference to a scalar
           containing a string. Again, you can pass an optional base URI to the function.

             my $doc = $parser->parse_string( $xmlstring, $baseuri );
             my $doc = $parser->parse_string(\$xmlstring, $baseuri);

       parse_html_file
             $doc = $parser->parse_html_file( $htmlfile, \%opts );

           Similar to parse_file() but parses HTML (strict) documents; $htmlfile can be filename
           or URL.

           An optional second argument can be used to pass some options to the HTML parser as a
           HASH reference. See options labeled with HTML in "Parser Options".

       parse_html_fh
             $doc = $parser->parse_html_fh( $io_fh, \%opts );

           Similar to parse_fh() but parses HTML (strict) streams.

           An optional second argument can be used to pass some options to the HTML parser as a
           HASH reference. See options labeled with HTML in "Parser Options".

           Note: encoding option may not work correctly with this function in libxml2 < 2.6.27 if
           the HTML file declares charset using a META tag.

       parse_html_string
             $doc = $parser->parse_html_string( $htmlstring, \%opts );

           Similar to parse_string() but parses HTML (strict) strings.

           An optional second argument can be used to pass some options to the HTML parser as a
           HASH reference. See options labeled with HTML in "Parser Options".

   Push Parser
       XML::LibXML provides a push parser interface. Rather than pulling the data from a given
       source the push parser waits for the data to be pushed into it.

       This allows one to parse large documents without waiting for the parser to finish. The
       interface is especially useful if a program needs to pre-process the incoming pieces of
       XML (e.g. to detect document boundaries).

       While XML::LibXML parse_*() functions force the data to be a well-formed XML, the push
       parser will take any arbitrary string that contains some XML data. The only requirement is
       that all the pushed strings are together a well formed document. With the push parser
       interface a program can interrupt the parsing process as required, where the parse_*()
       functions give not enough flexibility.

       Different to the pull parser implemented in parse_fh() or parse_file(), the push parser is
       not able to find out about the documents end itself. Thus the calling program needs to
       indicate explicitly when the parsing is done.

       In XML::LibXML this is done by a single function:

       parse_chunk
             $parser->parse_chunk($string, $terminate);

           parse_chunk() tries to parse a given chunk of data, which isn't necessarily well
           balanced data. The function takes two parameters: The chunk of data as a string and
           optional a termination flag. If the termination flag is set to a true value (e.g. 1),
           the parsing will be stopped and the resulting document will be returned as the
           following example describes:

             my $parser = XML::LibXML->new;
             for my $string ( "<", "foo", ' bar="hello world"', "/>") {
                  $parser->parse_chunk( $string );
             }
             my $doc = $parser->parse_chunk("", 1); # terminate the parsing

       Internally XML::LibXML provides three functions that control the push parser process:

       init_push
             $parser->init_push();

           Initializes the push parser.

       push
             $parser->push(@data);

           This function pushes the data stored inside the array to libxml2's parser. Each entry
           in @data must be a normal scalar! This method can be called repeatedly.

       finish_push
             $doc = $parser->finish_push( $recover );

           This function returns the result of the parsing process. If this function is called
           without a parameter it will complain about non well-formed documents. If $restore is
           1, the push parser can be used to restore broken or non well formed (XML) documents as
           the following example shows:

             eval {
                 $parser->push( "<foo>", "bar" );
                 $doc = $parser->finish_push();    # will report broken XML
             };
             if ( $@ ) {
                # ...
             }

           This can be annoying if the closing tag is missed by accident. The following code will
           restore the document:

             eval {
                 $parser->push( "<foo>", "bar" );
                 $doc = $parser->finish_push(1);   # will return the data parsed
                                                   # unless an error happened
             };

             print $doc->toString(); # returns "<foo>bar</foo>"

           Of course finish_push() will return nothing if there was no data pushed to the parser
           before.

   Pull Parser (Reader)
       XML::LibXML also provides a pull-parser interface similar to the XmlReader interface in
       .NET. This interface is almost streaming, and is usually faster and simpler to use than
       SAX. See XML::LibXML::Reader.

   Direct SAX Parser
       XML::LibXML provides a direct SAX parser in the XML::LibXML::SAX module.

   DOM based SAX Parser
       XML::LibXML also provides a DOM based SAX parser. The SAX parser is defined in the module
       XML::LibXML::SAX::Parser. As it is not a stream based parser, it parses documents into a
       DOM and traverses the DOM tree instead.

       The API of this parser is exactly the same as any other Perl SAX2 parser. See
       XML::SAX::Intro for details.

       Aside from the regular parsing methods, you can access the DOM tree traverser directly,
       using the generate() method:

         my $doc = build_yourself_a_document();
         my $saxparser = $XML::LibXML::SAX::Parser->new( ... );
         $parser->generate( $doc );

       This is useful for serializing DOM trees, for example that you might have done prior
       processing on, or that you have as a result of XSLT processing.

       WARNING

       This is NOT a streaming SAX parser. As I said above, this parser reads the entire document
       into a DOM and serialises it. Some people couldn't read that in the paragraph above so
       I've added this warning. If you want a streaming SAX parser look at the XML::LibXML::SAX
       man page

SERIALIZATION

       XML::LibXML provides some functions to serialize nodes and documents. The serialization
       functions are described on the XML::LibXML::Node manpage or the XML::LibXML::Document
       manpage. XML::LibXML checks three global flags that alter the serialization process:

       •   skipXMLDeclaration

       •   skipDTD

       •   setTagCompression

       of that three functions only setTagCompression is available for all serialization
       functions.

       Because XML::LibXML does these flags not itself, one has to define them locally as the
       following example shows:

         local $XML::LibXML::skipXMLDeclaration = 1;
         local $XML::LibXML::skipDTD = 1;
         local $XML::LibXML::setTagCompression = 1;

       If skipXMLDeclaration is defined and not '0', the XML declaration is omitted during
       serialization.

       If skipDTD is defined and not '0', an existing DTD would not be serialized with the
       document.

       If setTagCompression is defined and not '0' empty tags are displayed as open and closing
       tags rather than the shortcut. For example the empty tag foo will be rendered as
       <foo></foo> rather than <foo/>.

PARSER OPTIONS

       Handling of libxml2 parser options has been unified and improved in XML::LibXML 1.70. You
       can now set default options for a particular parser instance by passing them to the
       constructor as "XML::LibXML->new({name=>value, ...})" or
       "XML::LibXML->new(name=>value,...)". The options can be queried and changed using the
       following methods (pre-1.70 interfaces such as "$parser->load_ext_dtd(0)" also exist, see
       below):

       option_exists
             $parser->option_exists($name);

           Returns 1 if the current XML::LibXML version supports the option $name, otherwise
           returns 0 (note that this does not necessarily mean that the option is supported by
           the underlying libxml2 library).

       get_option
             $parser->get_option($name);

           Returns the current value of the parser option $name.

       set_option
             $parser->set_option($name,$value);

           Sets option $name to value $value.

       set_options
             $parser->set_options({$name=>$value,...});

           Sets multiple parsing options at once.

       IMPORTANT NOTE: This documentation reflects the parser flags available in libxml2 2.7.3.
       Some options have no effect if an older version of libxml2 is used.

       Each of the flags listed below is labeled

       /parser/
           if it can be used with a "XML::LibXML" parser object (i.e. passed to
           "XML::LibXML->new", "XML::LibXML->set_option", etc.)

       /html/
           if it can be used passed to the "parse_html_*" methods

       /reader/
           if it can be used with the "XML::LibXML::Reader".

       Unless specified otherwise, the default for boolean valued options is 0 (false).

       The available options are:

       URI /parser, html, reader/

           In case of parsing strings or file handles, XML::LibXML doesn't know about the base
           uri of the document. To make relative references such as XIncludes work, one has to
           set a base URI, that is then used for the parsed document.

       line_numbers
           /parser, html, reader/

           If this option is activated, libxml2 will store the line number of each element node
           in the parsed document. The line number can be obtained using the "line_number()"
           method of the "XML::LibXML::Node" class (for non-element nodes this may report the
           line number of the containing element). The line numbers are also used for reporting
           positions of validation errors.

           IMPORTANT: Due to limitations in the libxml2 library line numbers greater than 65535
           will be returned as 65535. Unfortunately, this is a long and sad story, please see
           <http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=325533> for more details.

       encoding
           /html/

           character encoding of the input

       recover
           /parser, html, reader/

           recover from errors; possible values are 0, 1, and 2

           A true value turns on recovery mode which allows one to parse broken XML or HTML data.
           The recovery mode allows the parser to return the successfully parsed portion of the
           input document. This is useful for almost well-formed documents, where for example a
           closing tag is missing somewhere. Still, XML::LibXML will only parse until the first
           fatal (non-recoverable) error occurs, reporting recoverable parsing errors as
           warnings. To suppress even these warnings, use recover=>2.

           Note that validation is switched off automatically in recovery mode.

       expand_entities
           /parser, reader/

           substitute entities; possible values are 0 and 1; default is 1

           Note that although this flag disables entity substitution, it does not prevent the
           parser from loading external entities; when substitution of an external entity is
           disabled, the entity will be represented in the document tree by an
           XML_ENTITY_REF_NODE node whose subtree will be the content obtained by parsing the
           external resource; Although this nesting is visible from the DOM it is transparent to
           XPath data model, so it is possible to match nodes in an unexpanded entity by the same
           XPath expression as if the entity were expanded.  See also ext_ent_handler.

       ext_ent_handler
           /parser/

           Provide a custom external entity handler to be used when expand_entities is set to 1.
           Possible value is a subroutine reference.

           This feature does not work properly in libxml2 < 2.6.27!

           The subroutine provided is called whenever the parser needs to retrieve the content of
           an external entity. It is called with two arguments: the system ID (URI) and the
           public ID. The value returned by the subroutine is parsed as the content of the
           entity.

           This method can be used to completely disable entity loading, e.g. to prevent exploits
           of the type described at
           (<http://searchsecuritychannel.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid97_gci1304703,00.html>),
           where a service is tricked to expose its private data by letting it parse a remote
           file (RSS feed) that contains an entity reference to a local file (e.g. "/etc/fstab").

           A more granular solution to this problem, however, is provided by custom URL
           resolvers, as in

             my $c = XML::LibXML::InputCallback->new();
             sub match {   # accept file:/ URIs except for XML catalogs in /etc/xml/
               my ($uri) = @_;
               return ($uri=~m{^file:/}
                       and $uri !~ m{^file:///etc/xml/})
                      ? 1 : 0;
             }
             $c->register_callbacks([ \&match, sub{}, sub{}, sub{} ]);
             $parser->input_callbacks($c);

       load_ext_dtd
           /parser, reader/

           load the external DTD subset while parsing; possible values are 0 and 1. Unless
           specified, XML::LibXML sets this option to 1.

           This flag is also required for DTD Validation, to provide complete attribute, and to
           expand entities, regardless if the document has an internal subset. Thus switching off
           external DTD loading, will disable entity expansion, validation, and complete
           attributes on internal subsets as well.

       complete_attributes
           /parser, reader/

           create default DTD attributes; possible values are 0 and 1

       validation
           /parser, reader/

           validate with the DTD; possible values are 0 and 1

       suppress_errors
           /parser, html, reader/

           suppress error reports; possible values are 0 and 1

       suppress_warnings
           /parser, html, reader/

           suppress warning reports; possible values are 0 and 1

       pedantic_parser
           /parser, html, reader/

           pedantic error reporting; possible values are 0 and 1

       no_blanks
           /parser, html, reader/

           remove blank nodes; possible values are 0 and 1

       no_defdtd
           /html/

           do not add a default DOCTYPE; possible values are 0 and 1

           the default is (0) to add a DTD when the input html lacks one

       expand_xinclude or xinclude
           /parser, reader/

           Implement XInclude substitution; possible values are 0 and 1

           Expands XInclude tags immediately while parsing the document. Note that the parser
           will use the URI resolvers installed via "XML::LibXML::InputCallback" to parse the
           included document (if any).

       no_xinclude_nodes
           /parser, reader/

           do not generate XINCLUDE START/END nodes; possible values are 0 and 1

       no_network
           /parser, html, reader/

           Forbid network access; possible values are 0 and 1

           If set to true, all attempts to fetch non-local resources (such as DTD or external
           entities) will fail (unless custom callbacks are defined).

           It may be necessary to use the flag "recover" for processing documents requiring such
           resources while networking is off.

       clean_namespaces
           /parser, reader/

           remove redundant namespaces declarations during parsing; possible values are 0 and 1.

       no_cdata
           /parser, html, reader/

           merge CDATA as text nodes; possible values are 0 and 1

       no_basefix
           /parser, reader/

           not fixup XINCLUDE xml#base URIS; possible values are 0 and 1

       huge
           /parser, html, reader/

           relax any hardcoded limit from the parser; possible values are 0 and 1. Unless
           specified, XML::LibXML sets this option to 0.

           Note: the default value for this option was changed to protect against denial of
           service through entity expansion attacks. Before enabling the option ensure you have
           taken alternative measures to protect your application against this type of attack.

       gdome
           /parser/

           THIS OPTION IS EXPERIMENTAL!

           Although quite powerful, XML::LibXML's DOM implementation is incomplete with respect
           to the DOM level 2 or level 3 specifications. XML::GDOME is based on libxml2 as well,
           and provides a rather complete DOM implementation by wrapping libgdome. This flag
           allows you to make use of XML::LibXML's full parser options and XML::GDOME's DOM
           implementation at the same time.

           To make use of this function, one has to install libgdome and configure XML::LibXML to
           use this library. For this you need to rebuild XML::LibXML!

           Note: this feature was not seriously tested in recent XML::LibXML releases.

       For compatibility with XML::LibXML versions prior to 1.70, the following methods are also
       supported for querying and setting the corresponding parser options (if called without
       arguments, the methods return the current value of the corresponding parser options; with
       an argument sets the option to a given value):

         $parser->validation();
         $parser->recover();
         $parser->pedantic_parser();
         $parser->line_numbers();
         $parser->load_ext_dtd();
         $parser->complete_attributes();
         $parser->expand_xinclude();
         $parser->gdome_dom();
         $parser->clean_namespaces();
         $parser->no_network();

       The following obsolete methods trigger parser options in some special way:

       recover_silently
             $parser->recover_silently(1);

           If called without an argument, returns true if the current value of the "recover"
           parser option is 2 and returns false otherwise. With a true argument sets the
           "recover" parser option to 2; with a false argument sets the "recover" parser option
           to 0.

       expand_entities
             $parser->expand_entities(0);

           Get/set the "expand_entities" option. If called with a true argument, also turns the
           "load_ext_dtd" option to 1.

       keep_blanks
             $parser->keep_blanks(0);

           This is actually the opposite of the "no_blanks" parser option. If used without an
           argument retrieves negated value of "no_blanks". If used with an argument sets
           "no_blanks" to the opposite value.

       base_uri
             $parser->base_uri( $your_base_uri );

           Get/set the "URI" option.

XML CATALOGS

       "libxml2" supports XML catalogs. Catalogs are used to map remote resources to their local
       copies. Using catalogs can speed up parsing processes if many external resources from
       remote addresses are loaded into the parsed documents (such as DTDs or XIncludes).

       Note that libxml2 has a global pool of loaded catalogs, so if you apply the method
       "load_catalog" to one parser instance, all parser instances will start using the catalog
       (in addition to other previously loaded catalogs).

       Note also that catalogs are not used when a custom external entity handler is specified.
       At the current state it is not possible to make use of both types of resolving systems at
       the same time.

       load_catalog
             $parser->load_catalog( $catalog_file );

           Loads the XML catalog file $catalog_file.

             # Global external entity loader (similar to ext_ent_handler option
             # but this works really globally, also in XML::LibXSLT include etc..)

             XML::LibXML::externalEntityLoader(\&my_loader);

ERROR REPORTING

       XML::LibXML throws exceptions during parsing, validation or XPath processing (and some
       other occasions). These errors can be caught by using eval blocks. The error is stored in
       $@. There are two implementations: the old one throws $@ which is just a message string,
       in the new one $@ is an object from the class XML::LibXML::Error; this class overrides the
       operator "" so that when printed, the object flattens to the usual error message.

       XML::LibXML throws errors as they occur. This is a very common misunderstanding in the use
       of XML::LibXML. If the eval is omitted, XML::LibXML will always halt your script by
       "croaking" (see Carp man page for details).

       Also note that an increasing number of functions throw errors if bad data is passed as
       arguments. If you cannot assure valid data passed to XML::LibXML you should eval these
       functions.

       Note: since version 1.59, get_last_error() is no longer available in XML::LibXML for
       thread-safety reasons.

AUTHORS

       Matt Sergeant, Christian Glahn, Petr Pajas

VERSION

       2.0108

COPYRIGHT

       2001-2007, AxKit.com Ltd.

       2002-2006, Christian Glahn.

       2006-2009, Petr Pajas.