Expat is a library, written in C, for parsing XML documents. It's the underlying XML parser for the open source Mozilla project, perl's XML::Parser, and other open-source XML parsers.
This library is the creation of James Clark, who's also given us groff (an nroff look-alike), Jade (an implemention of ISO's DSSSL stylesheet language for SGML), XP (a Java XML parser package), XT (a Java XSL engine). James was also the technical lead on the XML Working Group at W3 that produced the XML specification.
This is free software, licensed under the MIT/X Consortium license. You may download it from the expat homepage on Source Forge.
The bulk of this document was originally commissioned as an article by XML.com. They graciously allowed me to retain copyright and to distribute it with expat.
Expat is a stream-oriented parser. You register callback (or handler) functions with the parser and then start feeding it the document. As the parser recognizes parts of the document, it will call the appropriate handler for that part (if you've registered one.) The document is fed to the parser in pieces, so you can start parsing before you have all the document. This also allows you to parse really huge documents that won't fit into memory.
Expat can be intimidating due to the many kinds of handlers and options you can set. But you only need to learn four functions in order to do 90% of what you'll want to do with it:
XML_ParserCreateXML_SetElementHandlerXML_SetCharacterDataHandlerXML_ParseThese functions and others are described in the reference part of this document. The reference section also describes in detail the parameters passed to the different types of handlers.
Let's look at a very simple example program that only uses 3 of the above functions (it doesn't need to set a character handler.) The program outline.c prints an element outline, indenting child elements to distinguish them from the parent element that contains them. The start handler does all the work. It prints two indenting spaces for every level of ancestor elements, then it prints the element and attribute information. Finally it increments the global Depth variable.
int Depth;
void
start(void *data, const char *el, const char **attr) {
int i;
for (i = 0; i < Depth; i++)
printf(" ");
printf("%s", el);
for (i = 0; attr[i]; i += 2) {
printf(" %s='%s'", attr[i], attr[i + 1]);
}
printf("\n");
Depth++;
} /* End of start handler */
The end tag simply does the bookkeeping work of decrementing the Depth.
void
end(void *data, const char *el) {
Depth--;
} /* End of end handler */
After creating the parser, the main program just has the job of shoveling the document to the parser so that it can do its work.
The expat distribution comes as a compressed (with GNU gzip) tar file. After unpacking this, cd into the directory and run the configure shell script.
If you're happy with all the defaults that configure picks for you, and you have permission on your system to install into /usr/local, you can install expat with this sequence of commands:
./configure make make install
There are some options that you can provide to this script, but the
only one we'll mention here is the --prefix option. You can
find out all the options available by running configure with just the
--help option.
/usr/local/lib and the associated header file in
/usr/local/include.
But if you were to give the option, --prefix=/home/me/mystuff,
then the library and header would get installed in
/home/me/mystuff/lib and /home/me/mystuff/include
respectively.
Unless you installed expat in a location not expected by your compiler
and linker, all you have to do to use expat in your programs is to include
the expat header (#include <expat.h>) in your files that
make calls to it and to tell the linker
that it needs to link against the expat library. On Unix systems, this would
be the -lexpat argument.
Otherwise, you'll need to tell the compiler where to look for the expat header
and the linker where to find the expat library. You may also need to take
steps to tell the operating system where to find this libary at run time.
On a Unix based system, here's what a Makefile might look like when expat is installed in a standard location:
CC=cc
LDFLAGS=
LIBS= -lexpat
xmlapp: xmlapp.o
$(CC) $(LDFLAGS) -o xmlapp xmlapp.o $(LIBS)
If you installed expat in, say, /home/me/mystuff, then
the Makefile would look like this:
CC=cc
CFLAGS= -I/home/me/mystuff/include
LDFLAGS=
LIBS= -L/home/me/mystuff/lib -lexpat
xmlapp: xmlapp.o
$(CC) $(LDFLAGS) -o xmlapp xmlapp.o $(LIBS)
You'd also have to set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH
to /home/me/mystuff/lib (or to
${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/home/me/mystuff/lib if LD_LIBRARY_PATH
already has some directories in it) in order to run your application.
As we saw in the example in the overview, the first step in parsing an
XML document with expat is to create a parser object. There are
three functions in the expat API for creating a
parser object.
However, only two of these
(XML_ParserCreate and
XML_ParserCreateNS)
can be used for constructing a parser for a top-level document.
The object returned by these functions is an opaque pointer
(i.e. expat.h declares it as void *) to data with further internal structure.
In order to free the memory associated with this object you must call
XML_ParserFree. Note that if
you have provided any user data that gets stored
in the parser, then your application is responsible for freeing it prior to
calling XML_ParserFree.
The objects returned by the parser creation functions are good for parsing only one XML document or external parsed entity. If your application needs to parse many XML documents, then it needs to create a parser object for each one. The best way to deal with this is to create a higher level object that contains all the default initialization you want for your parser objects.
Walking through a document hierarchy with a stream oriented parser will require a good stack mechanism in order to keep track of current context. For instance, to answer the simple question, "What element does this text belong to?" requires a stack, since the parser may have descended into other elements that are children of the current one and has encountered this text on the way out.
The things you're likely to want to keep on a stack are the currently opened element and it's attributes. You push this information onto the stack in the start handler and you pop it off in the end handler.
For some tasks, it is sufficient to just keep information on what the depth of the stack is (or would be if you had one.) The outline program shown above presents one example. Another such task would be skipping over a complete element. When you see the start tag for the element you want to skip, you set a skip flag and record the depth at which the element started. When the end tag handler encounters the same depth, the skipped element has ended and the flag may be cleared. If you follow the convention that the root element starts at 1, then you can use the same variable for skip flag and skip depth.
void
init_info(Parseinfo *info) {
info->skip = 0;
info->depth = 1;
/* Other initializations here */
} /* End of init_info */
void
rawstart(void *data, const char *el, const char **attr) {
Parseinfo *inf = (Parseinfo *) data;
if (! inf->skip) {
if (should_skip(inf, el, attr)) {
inf->skip = inf->depth;
}
else
start(inf, el, attr); /* This does rest of start handling */
}
inf->depth++;
} /* End of rawstart */
void
rawend(void *data, const char *el) {
Parseinfo *inf = (Parseinfo *) data;
inf->depth--;
if (! inf->skip)
end(inf, el); /* This does rest of end handling */
if (inf->skip == inf->depth)
inf->skip = 0;
} /* End rawend */
Notice in the above example the difference in how depth is manipulated in the start and end handlers. The end tag handler should be the mirror image of the start tag handler. This is necessary to properly model containment. Since, in the start tag handler, we incremented depth after the main body of start tag code, then in the end handler, we need to manipulate it before the main body. If we'd decided to increment it first thing in the start handler, then we'd have had to decrement it last thing in the end handler.
In order to be able to pass information between different handlers without using globals, you'll need to define a data structure to hold the shared variables. You can then tell expat (with the XML_SetUserData function) to pass a pointer to this structure to the handlers. This is typically the first argument received by most handlers.
When the parser is created using the XML_ParserCreateNS,
function, expat performs namespace processing. Under namespace processing,
expat consumes xmlns and xmlns:... attributes,
which declare namespaces for the scope of the element in which they
occur. This means that your start handler will not see these attributes.
Your application can still be informed of these declarations by setting
namespace declaration handlers with
XML_SetNamespaceDeclHandler.
Element type and attribute names that belong to a given namespace are
passed to the appropriate handler in expanded form. By default this expanded
form is a concatenation of the namespace URI, the separator character (which
is the 2nd argument to XML_ParserCreateNS), and the local
name (i.e. the part after the colon). Names with undeclared prefixes are
passed through to the handlers unchanged, with the prefix and colon still
attached. Unprefixed attribute names are never expanded, and unprefixed
element names are only expanded when they are in the scope of a default
namespace.
However if XML_SetReturnNSTriplet
has been called with a non-zero do_nst parameter, then the
expanded form for names with an explicit prefix is a concatenation of:
URI, separator, local name, separator, prefix.
You can set handlers for the start of a namespace declaration and for
the end of a scope of a declaration with the
XML_SetNamespaceDeclHandler function.
The StartNamespaceDeclHandler is called prior to the start tag handler
and the EndNamespaceDeclHandler is called before the corresponding end tag
that ends the namespace's scope.
The namespace start handler gets passed the prefix and URI for the namespace.
For a default namespace declaration (xmlns='...'), the prefix will be null.
The URI will be null for the case where the default namespace is being unset.
The namespace end handler just gets the prefix for the closing scope.
These handlers are called for each declaration. So if, for instance, a start tag had three namespace declarations, then the StartNamespaceDeclHandler would be called three times before the start tag handler is called, once for each declaration.
The namespace.c example demonstrates the use of these features. Like outline.c, it produces an outline, but in addition it annotates when a namespace scope starts and when it ends. This example also demonstrates use of application user data.
While XML is based on Unicode, and every XML processor is required to recognized UTF-8 and UTF-16 (1 and 2 byte encodings of Unicode), other encodings may be declared in XML documents or entities. For the main document, an XML declaration may contain an encoding declaration:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-2"?>
External parsed entities may begin with a text declaration, which looks like an XML declaration with just an encoding declaration:
<?xml encoding="Big5"?>
With expat, you may also specify an encoding at the time of creating a parser. This is useful when the encoding information may come from a source outside the document itself (like a higher level protocol.)
There are four built-in encodings in expat:
Anything else discovered in an encoding declaration or in the
protocol encoding specified in the parser constructor, triggers a call
to the UnknownEncodingHandler. This handler gets passed
the encoding name and a pointer to an XML_Encoding data
structure. Your handler must fill in this structure and return 1 if
it knows how to deal with the encoding. Otherwise the handler should
return 0.
The handler also gets passed a pointer to an
optional application data structure that you may indicate when you set
the handler.
Expat places restrictions on character encodings that it can support
by filling in the XML_Encoding structure.
include file:
XML_Encoding contains an array of integers that correspond
to the 1st byte of an encoding sequence. If the value in the array for a
byte is zero or positive, then the byte is a single byte encoding that
encodes the Unicode scalar value contained in the array. A -1 in this array
indicates a malformed byte. If the value is
-2, -3, or -4, then the byte is the beginning of a 2, 3, or 4 byte sequence
respectively. Multi-byte sequences are sent to the convert function pointed
at in the XML_Encoding structure. This function should return
the Unicode scalar value for the sequence or -1 if the sequence is malformed.
One pitfall that novice expat users are likely to fall into is that although expat may accept input in various encodings, the strings that it passes to the handlers are always encoded in UTF-8. Your application is responsible for any translation of these strings into other encodings.
Expat does not read or parse external entities directly. Note that any
external DTD is a special case of an external entity.
If you've set no ExternalEntityRefHandler, then external
entity references are silently ignored. Otherwise, it calls your handler with
the information needed to read and parse the external entity.
Your handler
isn't actually responsible for parsing the entity, but it is responsible
for creating a subsidiary parser with
XML_ExternalEntityParserCreate that will do the job. This returns
an instance of XML_Parser that has handlers and other data
structures initialized from the parent parser. You may then use
XML_Parse or XML_ParseBuffer calls against this
parser.
Since external entities my refer to other external entities, your handler
should be prepared to be called recursively.
In order to parse parameter entities, before starting the parse, you must
call XML_SetParamEntityParsing with one of the following
arguments:
XML_PARAM_ENTITY_PARSING_NEVERXML_PARAM_ENTITY_PARSING_UNLESS_STANDALONEstandalone was set to "yes" in the XML declaration.XML_PARAM_ENTITY_PARSING_ALWAYSIn order to read an external DTD, you also have to set an external entity reference handler as described above.
Construct a new parser using the suite of memory handling functions
specified in ms. If ms is NULL, then use the
standard set of memory management functions. If sep is
non NULL, then namespace processing is enabled in the created parser
and the character pointed at by sep is used as the separator between
the namespace URI and the local part of the name
typedef struct {
void *(*malloc_fcn)(size_t size);
void *(*realloc_fcn)(void *ptr, size_t size);
void (*free_fcn)(void *ptr);
} XML_Memory_Handling_Suite;
s is a buffer
containing part (or perhaps all) of the document. The number of bytes of s
that are part of the document is indicated by len. This means
that s doesn't have to be null terminated. It also means that
if len is larger than the number of bytes in the block of
memory that s points at, then a memory fault is likely. The
isFinal parameter informs the parser that this is the last
piece of the document. Frequently, the last piece is empty (i.e.
len is zero.)
If a parse error occurred, it returns 0. Otherwise it returns a non-zero
value.
XML_GetBuffer
function, the application can avoid double copying of the input.
len to read a piece of the document
into. A NULL value is returned if expat can't allocate enough memory for
this buffer. This has to be called prior to every call to
XML_ParseBuffer. A typical use would look like this:
for (;;) {
int bytes_read;
void *buff = XML_GetBuffer(p, BUFF_SIZE);
if (buff == NULL) {
/* handle error */
}
bytes_read = read(docfd, buff, BUFF_SIZE);
if (bytes_read < 0) {
/* handle error */
}
if (! XML_ParseBuffer(p, bytes_read, bytes_read == 0)) {
/* handle parse error */
}
if (bytes_read == 0)
break;
}
Although handlers are typically set prior to parsing and left alone, an
application may choose to set or change the handler for a parsing event
while the parse is in progress. For instance, your application may choose
to ignore all text not descended from a para element. One
way it could do this is to set the character handler when a para start tag
is seen, and unset it for the corresponding end tag.
A handler may be unset by providing a NULL pointer to the appropriate handler setter. None of the handler setting functions have a return value.
Your handlers will be receiving strings in arrays of type
XML_Char. This type is defined in expat.h as char *
and contains bytes encoding UTF-8.
Note that you'll receive them in this form independent of the original
encoding of the document.
typedef void
(*XML_StartElementHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *name,
const XML_Char **atts);
Set handler for start (and empty) tags. Attributes are passed to the start handler as a pointer to a vector of char pointers. Each attribute seen in a start (or empty) tag occupies 2 consecutive places in this vector: the attribute name followed by the attribute value. These pairs are terminated by a null pointer.
Note that an empty tag generates a call to both start and end handlers (in that order).
typedef void
(*XML_EndElementHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *name);
Set handler for end (and empty) tags. As noted above, an empty tag generates a call to both start and end handlers.
Set handlers for start and end tags with one call.
typedef void
(*XML_CharacterDataHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *s,
int len);
Set a text handler. The string your handler receives is NOT zero terminated. You have to use the length argument to deal with the end of the string. A single block of contiguous text free of markup may still result in a sequence of calls to this handler. In other words, if you're searching for a pattern in the text, it may be split across calls to this handler.
typedef void
(*XML_ProcessingInstructionHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *target,
const XML_Char *data);
Set a handler for processing instructions. The target is the first word in the processing instruction. The data is the rest of the characters in it after skipping all whitespace after the initial word.
typedef void
(*XML_CommentHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *data);
Set a handler for comments. The data is all text inside the comment delimiters.
typedef void (*XML_StartCdataSectionHandler)(void *userData);
Set a handler that gets called at the beginning of a CDATA section.
typedef void (*XML_EndCdataSectionHandler)(void *userData);
Set a handler that gets called at the end of a CDATA section.
Sets both CDATA section handlers with one call.
typedef void
(*XML_DefaultHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *s,
int len);
Sets a handler for any characters in the document which wouldn't otherwise be handled. This includes both data for which no handlers can be set (like some kinds of DTD declarations) and data which could be reported but which currently has no handler set. Note that a contiguous piece of data that is destined to be reported to the default handler may actually be reported over several calls to the handler. Setting the handler with this call has the side effect of turning off expansion of references to internally defined general entities. Instead these references are passed to the default handler.
typedef void
(*XML_DefaultHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *s,
int len);
This sets a default handler, but doesn't affect expansion of internal entity references.
typedef int
(*XML_ExternalEntityRefHandler)(XML_Parser p,
const XML_Char *context,
const XML_Char *base,
const XML_Char *systemId,
const XML_Char *publicId);
Set an external entity reference handler. This handler is also
called for processing an external DTD subset if parameter entity parsing
is in effect. (See
XML_SetParamEntityParsing.)
The base parameter is the base to use for relative system identifiers. It is set by XML_SetBase and may be null. The public id parameter is the public id given in the entity declaration and may be null. The system id is the system identifier specified in the entity declaration and is never null.
There are a couple of ways in which this handler differs from others. First, this handler returns an integer. A non-zero value should be returned for successful handling of the external entity reference. Returning a zero indicates failure, and causes the calling parser to return an XML_ERROR_EXTERNAL_ENTITY_HANDLING error.
Second, instead of having userData as its first argument, it receives the parser that encountered the entity reference. This, along with the context parameter, may be used as arguments to a call to XML_ExternalEntityParserCreate. Using the returned parser, the body of the external entity can be recursively parsed.
Since this handler may be called recursively, it should not be saving information into global or static variables.
typedef int
(*XML_UnknownEncodingHandler)(void *encodingHandlerData,
const XML_Char *name,
XML_Encoding *info);
Set a handler to deal with encodings other than the built in set. If the handler knows how to deal with an encoding with the given name, it should fill in the info data structure and return 1. Otherwise it should return 0.
typedef struct {
int map[256];
void *data;
int (*convert)(void *data, const char *s);
void (*release)(void *data);
} XML_Encoding;
The map array contains information for every possible possible leading byte in a byte sequence. If the corresponding value is >= 0, then it's a single byte sequence and the byte encodes that Unicode value. If the value is -1, then that byte is invalid as the initial byte in a sequence. If the value is -n, where n is an integer > 1, then n is the number of bytes in the sequence and the actual conversion is accomplished by a call to the function pointed at by convert. This function may return -1 if the sequence itself is invalid. The convert pointer may be null if there are only single byte codes. The data parameter passed to the convert function is the data pointer from XML_Encoding. The string s is NOT null terminated and points at the sequence of bytes to be converted.
The function pointed at by release is called by the parser when it is finished with the encoding. It may be null.
typedef void
(*XML_StartNamespaceDeclHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *prefix,
const XML_Char *uri);
Set a handler to be called when a namespace is declared. Namespace declarations occur inside start tags. But the namespace declaration start handler is called before the start tag handler for each namespace declared in that start tag.
typedef void
(*XML_EndNamespaceDeclHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *prefix);
Set a handler to be called when leaving the scope of a namespace declaration. This will be called, for each namespace declaration, after the handler for the end tag of the element in which the namespace was declared.
Sets both namespace declaration handlers with a single call
typedef void
(*XML_XmlDeclHandler) (void *userData,
const XML_Char *version,
const XML_Char *encoding,
int standalone);
Sets a handler that is called for XML declarations and also for
text declarations discovered in external entities. The way to distinguish
is that the version parameter will be NULL for text
declarations. The encoding parameter may be NULL for
an XML declaration. The standalone argument will contain
-1, 0, or 1 indicating respectively that there was no standalone parameter in
the declaration, that it was given as no, or that it was given as yes.
typedef void
(*XML_StartDoctypeDeclHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *doctypeName,
const XML_Char *sysid,
const XML_Char *pubid,
int has_internal_subset);
Set a handler that is called at the start of a DOCTYPE declaration,
before any external or internal subset is parsed. Both sysid
and pubid may be NULL. The has_internal_subset
will be non-zero if the DOCTYPE declaration has an internal subset.
typedef void (*XML_EndDoctypeDeclHandler)(void *userData);
Set a handler that is called at the end of a DOCTYPE declaration, after parsing any external subset.
Set both doctype handlers with one call.
typedef void
(*XML_ElementDeclHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *name,
XML_Content *model);
enum XML_Content_Type {
XML_CTYPE_EMPTY = 1,
XML_CTYPE_ANY,
XML_CTYPE_MIXED,
XML_CTYPE_NAME,
XML_CTYPE_CHOICE,
XML_CTYPE_SEQ
};
enum XML_Content_Quant {
XML_CQUANT_NONE,
XML_CQUANT_OPT,
XML_CQUANT_REP,
XML_CQUANT_PLUS
};
typedef struct XML_cp XML_Content;
struct XML_cp {
enum XML_Content_Type type;
enum XML_Content_Quant quant;
const XML_Char * name;
unsigned int numchildren;
XML_Content * children;
};
Sets a handler for element declarations in a DTD. The handler gets called with the name of the element in the declaration and a pointer to a structure that contains the element model. It is the application's responsibility to free this data structure.
The model argument is the root of a tree of
XML_Content nodes. If type equals
XML_CTYPE_EMPTY or XML_CTYPE_ANY, then
quant will be XML_CQUANT_NONE, and the other fields
will be zero or NULL.
If type is XML_CTYPE_MIXED, then quant
will be XML_CQUANT_NONE or XML_CQUANT_REP and
numchildren will contain the number of elements that are allowed
to be mixed in and children points to an array of
XML_Content structures that will all have type XML_CTYPE_NAME
with no quantification.
Only the root node can be type XML_CTYPE_EMPTY, XML_CTYPE_ANY, or XML_CTYPE_MIXED.
For type XML_CTYPE_NAME, the name field points
to the name and the numchildren and children fields
will be zero and NULL. The quant field will indicate any
quantifiers placed on the name.
Types XML_CTYPE_CHOICE and XML_CTYPE_SEQ
indicate a choice or sequence respectively. The numchildren
field indicates how many nodes in the choice or sequence and
children points to the nodes.
typedef void
(*XML_AttlistDeclHandler) (void *userData,
const XML_Char *elname,
const XML_Char *attname,
const XML_Char *att_type,
const XML_Char *dflt,
int isrequired);
Set a handler for attlist declarations in the DTD. This handler is called
for each attribute. So a single attlist declaration with multiple
attributes declared will generate multiple calls to this handler. The
elname parameter returns the name of the element for which the
attribute is being declared. The attribute name is in the attname
parameter. The attribute type is in the att_type parameter.
It is the string representing the type in the declaration with whitespace
removed.
The dflt parameter holds the default value. It will
be NULL in the case of "#IMPLIED" or "#REQUIRED" attributes. You can
distinguish these two cases by checking the isrequired
parameter, which will be true in the case of "#REQUIRED" attributes.
Attributes which are "#FIXED" will have also have a true
isrequired, but they will have the non-NULL fixed value in the
dflt parameter.
typedef void
(*XML_EntityDeclHandler) (void *userData,
const XML_Char *entityName,
int is_parameter_entity,
const XML_Char *value,
int value_length,
const XML_Char *base,
const XML_Char *systemId,
const XML_Char *publicId,
const XML_Char *notationName);
Sets a handler that will be called for all entity declarations.
The is_parameter_entity argument will be non-zero in the case
of parameter entities and zero otherwise.
For internal entities (<!ENTITY foo "bar">),
value will be non-NULL and systemId,
publicId, and notationName will all be NULL.
The value string is not NULL terminated; the length is provided in
the value_length parameter. Do not use value_length
to test for internal entities, since it is legal to have zero-length
values. Instead check for whether or not value is NULL.
The notationName argument will have a non-NULL value only
for unparsed entity declarations.
typedef void
(*XML_UnparsedEntityDeclHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *entityName,
const XML_Char *base,
const XML_Char *systemId,
const XML_Char *publicId,
const XML_Char *notationName);
Set a handler that receives declarations of unparsed entities. These are entity declarations that have a notation (NDATA) field:
<!ENTITY logo SYSTEM "images/logo.gif" NDATA gif>
This handler is obsolete and is provided for backwards compatibility. Use instead XML_SetEntityDeclHandler.
typedef void
(*XML_NotationDeclHandler)(void *userData,
const XML_Char *notationName,
const XML_Char *base,
const XML_Char *systemId,
const XML_Char *publicId);
Set a handler that receives notation declarations.
typedef int (*XML_NotStandaloneHandler)(void *userData);
Set a handler that is called if the document is not "standalone". This happens when there is an external subset or a reference to a parameter entity, but does not have standalone set to "yes" in an XML declaration. If this handler returns 0, then the parser will throw an XML_ERROR_NOT_STANDALONE error.
These are the functions you'll want to call when the parse functions return 0 (i.e. a parse error has ocurred), although the position reporting functions are useful outside of errors. The position reported is the byte position (in the original document or entity encoding) of the first of the sequence of characters that generated the current event (or the error that caused the parse functions to return 0.)
The position reporting functions are accurate only outside of the DTD. In other words, they usually return bogus information when called from within a DTD declaration handler.
Returns the parser's input buffer, sets the integer pointed at by
offset to the offset within this buffer of the current
parse position, and set the integer pointed at by size
to the size of the returned buffer.
This should only be called from within a handler during an active parse and the returned buffer should only be referred to from within the handler that made the call. This input buffer contains the untranslated bytes of the input.
Only a limited amount of context is kept, so if the event triggering a call spans over a very large amount of input, the actual parse position may be before the beginning of the buffer.
The functions in this section either obtain state information from the parser or can be used to dynamicly set parser options.
userData when it is finished with the parser. So if
you call this when there's already a pointer there, and you haven't
freed the memory associated with it, then you've probably just leaked
memory.
atts
array passed to the start tag handler of the first attribute set
due to defaults. It supplies information for the last call to a start
handler. If called inside a start handler, then that means the current call.
code.
The choices for code are:
This function only has an effect when using a parser created with
XML_ParserCreateNS, i.e. when namespace
processing is in effect. The do_nst sets whether or not prefixes
are returned with names qualified with a namespace prefix. If this function
is called with do_nst non-zero, then afterwards namespace
qualified names (that is qualified with a prefix as opposed to belonging
to a default namespace) are returned as a triplet with the three parts
separated by the namespace separator specified when the parser was created.
The order of returned parts is URI, local name, and prefix.
If do_nst is zero, then namespaces are reported in the
default manner, URI then local_name separated by the namespace separator.