Provided by: libxml-dom-perl_1.44-2_all 
NAME
XML::DOM - A perl module for building DOM Level 1 compliant document structures
SYNOPSIS
use XML::DOM;
my $parser = new XML::DOM::Parser;
my $doc = $parser->parsefile ("file.xml");
# print all HREF attributes of all CODEBASE elements
my $nodes = $doc->getElementsByTagName ("CODEBASE");
my $n = $nodes->getLength;
for (my $i = 0; $i < $n; $i++)
{
my $node = $nodes->item ($i);
my $href = $node->getAttributeNode ("HREF");
print $href->getValue . "\n";
}
# Print doc file
$doc->printToFile ("out.xml");
# Print to string
print $doc->toString;
# Avoid memory leaks - cleanup circular references for garbage collection
$doc->dispose;
DESCRIPTION
This module extends the XML::Parser module by Clark Cooper. The XML::Parser module is
built on top of XML::Parser::Expat, which is a lower level interface to James Clark's
expat library.
XML::DOM::Parser is derived from XML::Parser. It parses XML strings or files and builds a
data structure that conforms to the API of the Document Object Model as described at
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1. See the XML::Parser manpage for other available
features of the XML::DOM::Parser class. Note that the 'Style' property should not be used
(it is set internally.)
The XML::Parser NoExpand option is more or less supported, in that it will generate
EntityReference objects whenever an entity reference is encountered in character data. I'm
not sure how useful this is. Any comments are welcome.
As described in the synopsis, when you create an XML::DOM::Parser object, the parse and
parsefile methods create an XML::DOM::Document object from the specified input. This
Document object can then be examined, modified and written back out to a file or converted
to a string.
When using XML::DOM with XML::Parser version 2.19 and up, setting the XML::DOM::Parser
option KeepCDATA to 1 will store CDATASections in CDATASection nodes, instead of
converting them to Text nodes. Subsequent CDATASection nodes will be merged into one. Let
me know if this is a problem.
When using XML::Parser 2.27 and above, you can suppress expansion of parameter entity
references (e.g. %pent;) in the DTD, by setting ParseParamEnt to 1 and ExpandParamEnt to
0. See Hidden Nodes for details.
A Document has a tree structure consisting of Node objects. A Node may contain other
nodes, depending on its type. A Document may have Element, Text, Comment, and
CDATASection nodes. Element nodes may have Attr, Element, Text, Comment, and CDATASection
nodes. The other nodes may not have any child nodes.
This module adds several node types that are not part of the DOM spec (yet.) These are:
ElementDecl (for <!ELEMENT ...> declarations), AttlistDecl (for <!ATTLIST ...>
declarations), XMLDecl (for <?xml ...?> declarations) and AttDef (for attribute
definitions in an AttlistDecl.)
XML::DOM Classes
The XML::DOM module stores XML documents in a tree structure with a root node of type
XML::DOM::Document. Different nodes in tree represent different parts of the XML file. The
DOM Level 1 Specification defines the following node types:
• XML::DOM::Node - Super class of all node types
• XML::DOM::Document - The root of the XML document
• XML::DOM::DocumentType - Describes the document structure: <!DOCTYPE root [ ... ]>
• XML::DOM::Element - An XML element: <elem attr="val"> ... </elem>
• XML::DOM::Attr - An XML element attribute: name="value"
• XML::DOM::CharacterData - Super class of Text, Comment and CDATASection
• XML::DOM::Text - Text in an XML element
• XML::DOM::CDATASection - Escaped block of text: <![CDATA[ text ]]>
• XML::DOM::Comment - An XML comment: <!-- comment -->
• XML::DOM::EntityReference - Refers to an ENTITY: &ent; or %ent;
• XML::DOM::Entity - An ENTITY definition: <!ENTITY ...>
• XML::DOM::ProcessingInstruction - <?PI target>
• XML::DOM::DocumentFragment - Lightweight node for cut & paste
• XML::DOM::Notation - An NOTATION definition: <!NOTATION ...>
In addition, the XML::DOM module contains the following nodes that are not part of the DOM
Level 1 Specification:
• XML::DOM::ElementDecl - Defines an element: <!ELEMENT ...>
• XML::DOM::AttlistDecl - Defines one or more attributes in an <!ATTLIST ...>
• XML::DOM::AttDef - Defines one attribute in an <!ATTLIST ...>
• XML::DOM::XMLDecl - An XML declaration: <?xml version="1.0" ...>
Other classes that are part of the DOM Level 1 Spec:
• XML::DOM::Implementation - Provides information about this implementation. Currently
it doesn't do much.
• XML::DOM::NodeList - Used internally to store a node's child nodes. Also returned by
getElementsByTagName.
• XML::DOM::NamedNodeMap - Used internally to store an element's attributes.
Other classes that are not part of the DOM Level 1 Spec:
• XML::DOM::Parser - An non-validating XML parser that creates XML::DOM::Documents
• XML::DOM::ValParser - A validating XML parser that creates XML::DOM::Documents. It
uses XML::Checker to check against the DocumentType (DTD)
• XML::Handler::BuildDOM - A PerlSAX handler that creates XML::DOM::Documents.
XML::DOM package
Constant definitions
The following predefined constants indicate which type of node it is.
UNKNOWN_NODE (0) The node type is unknown (not part of DOM)
ELEMENT_NODE (1) The node is an Element.
ATTRIBUTE_NODE (2) The node is an Attr.
TEXT_NODE (3) The node is a Text node.
CDATA_SECTION_NODE (4) The node is a CDATASection.
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE (5) The node is an EntityReference.
ENTITY_NODE (6) The node is an Entity.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE (7) The node is a ProcessingInstruction.
COMMENT_NODE (8) The node is a Comment.
DOCUMENT_NODE (9) The node is a Document.
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE (10) The node is a DocumentType.
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE (11) The node is a DocumentFragment.
NOTATION_NODE (12) The node is a Notation.
ELEMENT_DECL_NODE (13) The node is an ElementDecl (not part of DOM)
ATT_DEF_NODE (14) The node is an AttDef (not part of DOM)
XML_DECL_NODE (15) The node is an XMLDecl (not part of DOM)
ATTLIST_DECL_NODE (16) The node is an AttlistDecl (not part of DOM)
Usage:
if ($node->getNodeType == ELEMENT_NODE)
{
print "It's an Element";
}
Not In DOM Spec: The DOM Spec does not mention UNKNOWN_NODE and, quite frankly, you should
never encounter it. The last 4 node types were added to support the 4 added node classes.
Global Variables
$VERSION
The variable $XML::DOM::VERSION contains the version number of this implementation,
e.g. "1.43".
METHODS
These methods are not part of the DOM Level 1 Specification.
getIgnoreReadOnly and ignoreReadOnly (readOnly)
The DOM Level 1 Spec does not allow you to edit certain sections of the document, e.g.
the DocumentType, so by default this implementation throws DOMExceptions (i.e.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR) when you try to edit a readonly node. These readonly
checks can be disabled by (temporarily) setting the global IgnoreReadOnly flag.
The ignoreReadOnly method sets the global IgnoreReadOnly flag and returns its previous
value. The getIgnoreReadOnly method simply returns its current value.
my $oldIgnore = XML::DOM::ignoreReadOnly (1);
eval {
... do whatever you want, catching any other exceptions ...
};
XML::DOM::ignoreReadOnly ($oldIgnore); # restore previous value
Another way to do it, using a local variable:
{ # start new scope
local $XML::DOM::IgnoreReadOnly = 1;
... do whatever you want, don't worry about exceptions ...
} # end of scope ($IgnoreReadOnly is set back to its previous value)
isValidName (name)
Whether the specified name is a valid "Name" as specified in the XML spec. Characters
with Unicode values > 127 are now also supported.
getAllowReservedNames and allowReservedNames (boolean)
The first method returns whether reserved names are allowed. The second takes a
boolean argument and sets whether reserved names are allowed. The initial value is 1
(i.e. allow reserved names.)
The XML spec states that "Names" starting with (X|x)(M|m)(L|l) are reserved for future
use. (Amusingly enough, the XML version of the XML spec (REC-xml-19980210.xml) breaks
that very rule by defining an ENTITY with the name 'xmlpio'.) A "Name" in this
context means the Name token as found in the BNF rules in the XML spec.
XML::DOM only checks for errors when you modify the DOM tree, not when the DOM tree is
built by the XML::DOM::Parser.
setTagCompression (funcref)
There are 3 possible styles for printing empty Element tags:
Style 0
<empty/> or <empty attr="val"/>
XML::DOM uses this style by default for all Elements.
Style 1
<empty></empty> or <empty attr="val"></empty>
Style 2
<empty /> or <empty attr="val" />
This style is sometimes desired when using XHTML. (Note the extra space before
the slash "/") See <http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1> Appendix C for more details.
By default XML::DOM compresses all empty Element tags (style 0.) You can control
which style is used for a particular Element by calling XML::DOM::setTagCompression
with a reference to a function that takes 2 arguments. The first is the tag name of
the Element, the second is the XML::DOM::Element that is being printed. The function
should return 0, 1 or 2 to indicate which style should be used to print the empty tag.
E.g.
XML::DOM::setTagCompression (\&my_tag_compression);
sub my_tag_compression
{
my ($tag, $elem) = @_;
# Print empty br, hr and img tags like this: <br />
return 2 if $tag =~ /^(br|hr|img)$/;
# Print other empty tags like this: <empty></empty>
return 1;
}
IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS
• Perl Mappings
The value undef was used when the DOM Spec said null.
The DOM Spec says: Applications must encode DOMString using UTF-16 (defined in
Appendix C.3 of [UNICODE] and Amendment 1 of [ISO-10646]). In this implementation we
use plain old Perl strings encoded in UTF-8 instead of UTF-16.
• Text and CDATASection nodes
The Expat parser expands EntityReferences and CDataSection sections to raw strings and
does not indicate where it was found. This implementation does therefore convert both
to Text nodes at parse time. CDATASection and EntityReference nodes that are added to
an existing Document (by the user) will be preserved.
Also, subsequent Text nodes are always merged at parse time. Text nodes that are added
later can be merged with the normalize method. Consider using the addText method when
adding Text nodes.
• Printing and toString
When printing (and converting an XML Document to a string) the strings have to encoded
differently depending on where they occur. E.g. in a CDATASection all substrings are
allowed except for "]]>". In regular text, certain characters are not allowed, e.g.
">" has to be converted to ">". These routines should be verified by someone who
knows the details.
• Quotes
Certain sections in XML are quoted, like attribute values in an Element. XML::Parser
strips these quotes and the print methods in this implementation always uses double
quotes, so when parsing and printing a document, single quotes may be converted to
double quotes. The default value of an attribute definition (AttDef) in an
AttlistDecl, however, will maintain its quotes.
• AttlistDecl
Attribute declarations for a certain Element are always merged into a single
AttlistDecl object.
• Comments
Comments in the DOCTYPE section are not kept in the right place. They will become
child nodes of the Document.
• Hidden Nodes
Previous versions of XML::DOM would expand parameter entity references (like %pent;),
so when printing the DTD, it would print the contents of the external entity, instead
of the parameter entity reference. With this release (1.27), you can prevent this by
setting the XML::DOM::Parser options ParseParamEnt => 1 and ExpandParamEnt => 0.
When it is parsing the contents of the external entities, it *DOES* still add the
nodes to the DocumentType, but it marks these nodes by setting the 'Hidden' property.
In addition, it adds an EntityReference node to the DocumentType node.
When printing the DocumentType node (or when using to_expat() or to_sax()), the
'Hidden' nodes are suppressed, so you will see the parameter entity reference instead
of the contents of the external entities. See test case t/dom_extent.t for an example.
The reason for adding the 'Hidden' nodes to the DocumentType node, is that the nodes
may contain <!ENTITY> definitions that are referenced further in the document. (Simply
not adding the nodes to the DocumentType could cause such entity references to be
expanded incorrectly.)
Note that you need XML::Parser 2.27 or higher for this to work correctly.
SEE ALSO
XML::DOM::XPath
The Japanese version of this document by Takanori Kawai (Hippo2000) at
<http://member.nifty.ne.jp/hippo2000/perltips/xml/dom.htm>
The DOM Level 1 specification at <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1>
The XML spec (Extensible Markup Language 1.0) at <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml>
The XML::Parser and XML::Parser::Expat manual pages.
XML::LibXML also provides a DOM Parser, and is significantly faster than XML::DOM, and is
under active development. It requires that you download the Gnome libxml library.
XML::GDOME will provide the DOM Level 2 Core API, and should be as fast as XML::LibXML,
but more robust, since it uses the memory management functions of libgdome. For more
details see <http://tjmather.com/xml-gdome/>
CAVEATS
The method getElementsByTagName() does not return a "live" NodeList. Whether this is an
actual caveat is debatable, but a few people on the www-dom mailing list seemed to think
so. I haven't decided yet. It's a pain to implement, it slows things down and the benefits
seem marginal. Let me know what you think.
AUTHOR
Enno Derksen is the original author.
Send patches to T.J. Mather at <tjmather@maxmind.com>.
Paid support is available from directly from the maintainers of this package. Please see
<http://www.maxmind.com/app/opensourceservices> for more details.
Thanks to Clark Cooper for his help with the initial version.