Expat is an XML parser library written in C. It is a stream-oriented parser in which an application registers handlers for things the parser might find in the XML document (like start tags). An introductory article on using Expat is available on xml.com.

• Expat project page (includes downloads)
• Mailing lists
• 3rd-party wrappers (SAX, DOM, other language bindings)
• CVS repository (browse online)
• Bug reports
• Notes for Expat maintainers

This project aims to maintain Expat for both current and future users while improving the API to allow more reliable and robust access from "scripting" languages such as Python and Perl. We invite the community to participate on the mailing lists to help shape the future of Expat.

News

27 December 2005, Final Expat 2.0 pre-release snapshot made available.

This pre-release distribution is based on the feedback we got from the Dec. 23 snapshot and represents the final opportunity for feedback before the actual release goes out.

We plan to release after the New Year.

23 December 2005, Expat 2.0 pre-release snapshot (another one) made available.

As nothing happened here for a long time, we've posted another pre-release distribution snapshot of the code currently in CVS on libexpat.org. Please try this out and report any problems you have. We'd like to get Expat 2.0 out soon.

A late addition was the new (optional) XML_LARGE_SIZE feature to enable 64-bit integers on some API members. Please check how it builds and works for you.

28 January 2005, Expat pre-release snapshot made available.

We've posted a pre-release distribution snapshot of the code currently in CVS on libexpat.org. Please try this out and report any problems you have. We'd like to get a release out soon.

The coming release will either be 1.95.9 or 2.0, depending primarily on the response to this snapshot. If we do decide to make this 1.95.9, then we'll try to follow up with 2.0 in about a month.

23 July 2004, Expat 1.95.8 released.

The release schedule described in the previous news item didn't work out. As a compensation, we've fixed a number of the nuissance warnings generated on many platforms, and added a nice new suspend/resume feature to the parser.

• Major new feature: suspend/resume. Handlers can now request that a parse be suspended for later resumption or aborted altogether. See "Temporarily Stopping Parsing" in the documentation for more details.
• Some mostly minor bug fixes, but compilation should no longer generate warnings on most platforms. SF issues include: 827319, 840173, 846309, 888329, 896188, 923913, 928113, 961698, 985192.

Old news archive

References & 3rd-party Wrappers

If you know of any additional articles or resources which should be linked to from this page, please send email to Fred Drake (fdrake@acm.org). We're especially interested in links to tutorial information and open source interfaces to Expat from languages other than C.

• James Clark's original Expat page, for Expat 1.2 and earlier
• Introductory article on using Expat on xml.com
• LuaExpat is a wrapper around Expat for the Lua programming language. The LuaSOAP library is a SOAP implementation built on top of LuaExpat.
• Perl's XML::Parser module is a wrapper built around a binding to Expat in the XML::Parser::Expat module.
• Documentation for the Python interface to Expat, part of the standard documentation for Python.
• SAXExpat.NET, a .NET wrapper for Expat, conforming to the SAX for .NET specifications.
• The Simple C Expat Wrapper is a wrapper around Expat that provides a light-weight object model somewhat like a DOM.
• C++ Wrappers for the Expat XML Parser, an article by Tim Smith providing object-oriented wrappers for Expat. The wrappers use some MFC-biased naming, but look interesting.
• Arabica -- an XML Parser toolkit for C++ programmers, with SAX2 implementations based on several parsers, including Expat.
• expatpp -- C++ interface to Expat
• SAX2 Wrapper for using Expat in Delphi, based on "SAX for Pascal" interface specs
• The TclXML project includes a Tcl binding for Expat
• tDOM is an alternate package providing XML support for Tcl, based in part on Expat.
• Article on using Expat from PHP on <?PHPBuilder?>
  (broken into lots of tiny pieces)
• Objective-C interface to Expat
• OCaml Expat is a wrapper around Expat for the Objective Caml language.
• Ruby interface to Expat
• XML Tools 2 is an AppleScript scripting addition that allows AppleScript applications to work with XML data; it is based on Expat.
• Simkin is an open source scripting language available under the GNU LGPL. It can be embedded in XML and supports a DOM-like API backed by Expat.
• EasySoap is a C++ SOAP implementation which uses Expat.
• A discussion of another way to manage stateful callbacks, using Expat as a sample library.
• The GOBO project is working on an Eiffel binding for Expat. Development is active and the package is fully supported in GOBO 3.0 and 3.1, though there isn't much status information about the Expat bindings on the website. (Most activity is reportedly on the relevant mailing lists.)
• Expat4D is a plug-in for the 4th Dimension application framework.