lua-xmlreader

Provides the XmlReader API to Lua applications using LibXML2. XmlReader is an API introduced in C# that is arguably easier to use than SAX. It provides a pull interface where you control the reader, which is a cursor moving along the document. Call methods such as reader:name() to get information about the current node and reader:read() to advance to the next. This has the advantage versus a tree model such as DOM that the whole document does not need to be loaded into memory at once. The many articles and tutorials available online referring to XmlReader/XmlTextReader in C#, Java or other languages should all be useful if you want to better understand this method of handling XML. lua-xmlreader depends on the libxml2 library.

Project links

Release history

lua-xmlreader-0.1 (2008-01-25)
- first public release

Example

Below is a fairly simple example demonstrating how you extract information from an XML document using an XmlReader. It prints each element along with its attributes.

#! /usr/bin/env lua
require('xmlreader')

local example_xml = [[
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<library>
  <book id='1'>
    <title>Green Eggs and Ham</title>
    <author>Dr. Seuss</author>
  </book>
  <book id='2'>
    <title>Where the Wild Things Are</title>
    <author>Maurice Sendak</author>
  </book>
</library>
]]

local r = assert(xmlreader.from_string(example_xml))

while (r:read()) do
  local leadingws = ('    '):rep(r:depth())
  if (r:node_type() == 'element') then
    io.write(('%s%s:'):format(leadingws, r:name()))
    while (r:move_to_next_attribute()) do
      io.write((' %s=%q'):format(r:name(), r:value()))
    end
    io.write('\n')
  end
end

When executed, this would output:

library:
    book: id="1"
        title:
        author:
    book: id="2"
        title:
        author:

License

lua-xmlreader is distributed under the MIT license.

Copyright (c) 2008 A.S. Bradbury

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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