Comments on: Looking for a modern DOM/XSLT/Xpath implementation in C

Question: Looking for a modern DOM/XSLT/Xpath implementation in C

ChrisR — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 15:47:26 -0800

My boss has tasked me with tracking down a modern XML library written in C. The library has to run on (at least) RHEL3, Windows, and Solaris, but more is better.

I've seen tDOM, but it doesn't look like it's as up to date as we need. However, I'm not too up on the standards (that's part of my quest) so I don't know for sure. It's possible that domc is what I'm looking for, but, again, I lack the knowledge of the standards required to judge it.

Can someone help direct my inquiries here? Are there other options? How would I best evaluate them?

By: togdon

togdon — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 16:03:25 -0800

The one-two-three punch of libxml/libxslt/libgdome?

By: funkbrain

funkbrain — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 17:01:20 -0800

I'm happy with TinyXml, though it's C++.

By: jumpsuit_boy

jumpsuit_boy — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 18:03:09 -0800

Use the big daddy http://expat.sourceforge.net/
or xerces (xml) and Xalan (xslt) of apache fame http://xml.apache.org/index.html.

all are written in c or c++ and compile on unix and windows

By: phatboy

phatboy — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 18:11:06 -0800

I use libxml without (major) problems under Linux, Solaris and Windows.

By: cmonkey

cmonkey — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 20:51:25 -0800

I use libxml2 on Linux, as well. It's easy to work with, portable, it has both DOM and SAX interfaces, and it's MIT licensed, so it's very permissive.

By: azazello

azazello — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 23:50:52 -0800

As far as I know, Xerces and Expat are the most popular. Xerces is provided under the Apache license and Expat is provided as-is.

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:09:05 -0800

Expat is kind of the universally-available default. Experience at my workplace has been that Xerces/Xalan is a real pain to work with (massively overengineered?) and libxml2 is what we're moving to instead (except for where we're sticking to expat, or totally proprietary stuff). It's possible that we just don't need what Xerces is designed to provide.

Re "how should I evaluate them": first figure out what you need. Do you want to write something that builds and manipulates an in-memory representation of the XML tree (a DOM or whatever), or something that feeds into/out of your existing data model? Do you need DTD or schema checking? External entities? XSLT? Can your whole document fit in RAM or do you need to stream stuff? etc.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 03:38:42 -0800

are you sure you need c? in my experience, java libraries tend to be maintained more often, especially in obscurer corners of standards. of course, you may need c if this is for linking directly, but with something xslt or svg (which you don't mention) a standalone solution may be sufficient.

also you sounds worryingly vague about your requirements. do you understand the difference between sax and dom? do you want to a quick and easy solution to for small datasets (dom), or are you looking to process large structures/volumes efficiently (sax)? if you're thinking of xsl, have you actually tried using it (it's cool, but has a steep learning curve if you're not used to functional / declarative programming).

By: ChrisR

ChrisR — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 06:52:31 -0800

Yes, we strictly require c. This would have to integrate directly with existing C code, without the overhead of a JVM.

Also, we're working mainly with small data sets -- XML descriptors and messages, specifically, that will be handled entirely in-memory. At the moment, we have a home-grown DOM 1.5-ish (yep, that's what I meant) xml parser with a good, if incomplete, xpath library, and for the stylesheets we're regrettably using Java... which has performance characteristics that are not going to remain acceptable for long, in the situation that we're using it.