NAME

       XML::LibXML::Common - Constants and Character Encoding Routines

SYNOPSIS

         use XML::LibXML::Common;

         $encodedstring = encodeToUTF8( $name_of_encoding, $sting_to_encode );
         $decodedstring = decodeFromUTF8($name_of_encoding, $string_to_decode );

DESCRIPTION

       XML::LibXML::Common defines constants for all node types and provides interface to libxml2 charset
       conversion functions.

       Since XML::LibXML use their own node type definitions, one may want to use XML::LibXML::Common in its
       compatibility mode:

   Exporter TAGS
         use XML::LibXML::Common qw(:libxml);

       ":libxml" tag will use the XML::LibXML Compatibility mode, which defines the old 'XML_' node-type
       definitions.

         use XML::LibXML::Common qw(:gdome);

       ":gdome" tag will use the XML::GDOME Compatibility mode, which defines the old 'GDOME_' node-type
       definitions.

         use XML::LibXML::Common qw(:w3c);

       This uses the nodetype definition names as specified for DOM.

         use XML::LibXML::Common qw(:encoding);

       This tag can be used to export only the charset encoding functions of XML::LibXML::Common.

   Exports
       By default the W3 definitions as defined in the DOM specifications and the encoding functions are
       exported by XML::LibXML::Common.

   Encoding functions
       To encode or decode a string to or from UTF-8, XML::LibXML::Common exports two functions, which provide
       an interface to the encoding support in "libxml2". Which encodings are supported by these functions
       depends on how "libxml2" was compiled. UTF-16 is always supported and on most installations, ISO
       encodings are supported as well.

       This interface was useful for older versions of Perl. Since Perl >= 5.8 provides similar functions via
       the "Encode" module, it is probably a good idea to use those instead.

       encodeToUTF8
             $encodedstring = encodeToUTF8( $name_of_encoding, $sting_to_encode );

           The function will convert a byte string from the specified encoding to an UTF-8 encoded character
           string.

       decodeToUTF8
             $decodedstring = decodeFromUTF8($name_of_encoding, $string_to_decode );

           This function converts an UTF-8 encoded character string to a specified encoding. Note that the
           conversion can raise an error if the given string contains characters that cannot be represented in
           the target encoding.

       Both these functions report their errors on the standard error. If an error occurs the function will
       croak(). To catch the error information it is required to call the encoding function from within an eval
       block in order to prevent the entire script from being stopped on encoding error.

   A note on history
       Before XML::LibXML 1.70, this class was available as a separate CPAN distribution, intended to provide
       functionality shared between XML::LibXML, XML::GDOME, and possibly other modules. Since there seems to be
       no progress in this direction, we decided to merge XML::LibXML::Common 0.13 and XML::LibXML 1.70 to one
       CPAN distribution.

       The merge also naturally eliminates a practical and urgent problem experienced by many XML::LibXML users
       on certain platforms, namely mysterious misbehavior of XML::LibXML occurring if the installed (often pre-
       packaged) version of XML::LibXML::Common was compiled against an older version of libxml2 than
       XML::LibXML.

AUTHORS

       Matt Sergeant, Christian Glahn, Petr Pajas

VERSION

       2.0108

COPYRIGHT

       2001-2007, AxKit.com Ltd.

       2002-2006, Christian Glahn.

       2006-2009, Petr Pajas.