\documentclass{ltxdoc}
\usepackage{tgschola,url}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\begin{document}
\title{The \textsc{LuaXML} library}
\author{Paul Chakravarti \and Michal Hoftich}
\date{Version 0.0.2\\May 25, 2013}
\maketitle
\tableofcontents
\section*{Introduction}
|LuaXML| is pure lua library for reading and serializing of the |xml| files.
Current release is aimed mainly as support for the odsfile package.
In first release it was included with the odsfile package,
but as it is general library which can be used also with other packages,
I decided to distribute it as separate library.
\noindent Example of usage:
\begin{verbatim}
xml = require('luaxml-mod-xml')
handler = require('luaxml-mod-handler')
\end{verbatim}
First load the libraries. In |luaxml-mod-xml|, there is xml parser and also serializer. In |luaxml-mod-handler|, there are various handlers for dealing with xml data. Handlers are objects with callback functions which are invoked for every type of content in the |xml| file. More information about handlers can be found in the original documentation, section \ref{sec:handlers}.
\begin{verbatim}
sample = [[
hello
world.
another
]]
treehandler = handler.simpleTreeHandler()
x = xml.xmlParser(treehandler)
x:parse(sample)
\end{verbatim}
You have to create handler object, using |handler.simpleTreeHandler()| and xml parser object using |xml.xmlParser(handler object)|. |simpleTreehandler| creates simple table hierarchy, with top root node in |treehandler.root|
\begin{verbatim}
-- pretty printing function
function printable(tb, level)
level = level or 1
local spaces = string.rep(' ', level*2)
for k,v in pairs(tb) do
if type(v) ~= "table" then
print(spaces .. k..'='..v)
else
print(spaces .. k)
level = level + 1
printable(v, level)
end
end
end
-- print table
printable(treehandler.root)
-- print xml serialization of table
print(xml.serialize(treehandler.root))
-- direct access to the element
print(treehandler.root["a"]["b"][1])
-- output:
-- a
-- d=hello
-- b
-- 1=world.
-- 2
-- 1=another
-- _attr
-- at=Hi
--
--
-- hello
-- world.
--
-- another
--
--
--
-- world.
\end{verbatim}
Note that |simpleTreeHandler| creates tables that can be easily accessed using standard lua functions, but in case of mixed content, like
\begin{verbatim}
hello
world
\end{verbatim}
it produces wrong results. It is useful mostly for data |xml| files, not for text formats like |xhtml|.
For complex xml documents with mixed content, |domHandler| is capable of representing any valid XML document:
\begin{verbatim}
-- dom-sample.lua
-- next line enables scripts called with texlua to use luatex libraries
kpse.set_program_name("luatex")
function traverseDom(parser, current,level)
local level = level or 0
local spaces = string.rep(" ",level)
local root= current or parser._handler.root
local name = root._name or "unnamed"
local xtype = root._type or "untyped"
local attributes = root._attr or {}
if xtype == "TEXT" then
print(spaces .."TEXT : " .. root._text)
else
print(spaces .. xtype .. " : " .. name)
end
for k, v in pairs(attributes) do
print(spaces .. " ".. k.."="..v)
end
local children = root._children or {}
for _, child in ipairs(children) do
traverseDom(parser,child, level + 1)
end
end
local xml = require('luaxml-mod-xml')
local handler = require('luaxml-mod-handler')
local x = '
hello world, how are you?
'
local domHandler = handler.domHandler()
local parser = xml.xmlParser(domHandler)
parser:parse(x)
traverseDom(parser)
\end{verbatim}
This produces after running with |texlua dom-sample.lua|:
\begin{verbatim}
ROOT : unnamed
ELEMENT : p
TEXT : hello
ELEMENT : a
href=http://world.com/
TEXT : world
TEXT : , how are you?
\end{verbatim}
With \verb|domHandler|, you can process documents with mixed content, like \verb|xhtml|.
Because at the moment it is intended mainly as support for the odsfile package, there is little documentation,
what follows is the original documentation of |LuaXML|, which may be little bit obsolete now.
\clearpage
\noindent{\Huge Original documentation}
\medskip
\noindent This document was created automatically from original source code comments using Pandoc\footnote{\url{http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/}}
\section{Overview}
This module provides a non-validating XML stream parser in Lua.
\section{Features}
\begin{itemize}
\item
Tokenises well-formed XML (relatively robustly)
\item
Flexible handler based event api (see below)
\item
Parses all XML Infoset elements - ie.
\begin{itemize}
\item
Tags
\item
Text
\item
Comments
\item
CDATA
\item
XML Decl
\item
Processing Instructions
\item
DOCTYPE declarations
\end{itemize}
\item
Provides limited well-formedness checking (checks for basic syntax \&
balanced tags only)
\item
Flexible whitespace handling (selectable)
\item
Entity Handling (selectable)
\end{itemize}
\section{Limitations}
\begin{itemize}
\item
Non-validating
\item
No charset handling
\item
No namespace support
\item
Shallow well-formedness checking only (fails to detect most semantic
errors)
\end{itemize}
\section{API}
The parser provides a partially object-oriented API with functionality
split into tokeniser and hanlder components.
The handler instance is passed to the tokeniser and receives callbacks
for each XML element processed (if a suitable handler function is
defined). The API is conceptually similar to the SAX API but implemented
differently.
The following events are generated by the tokeniser
\begin{verbatim}
handler:starttag - Start Tag
handler:endtag - End Tag
handler:text - Text
handler:decl - XML Declaration
handler:pi - Processing Instruction
handler:comment - Comment
handler:dtd - DOCTYPE definition
handler:cdata - CDATA
\end{verbatim}
The function prototype for all the callback functions is
\begin{verbatim}
callback(val,attrs,start,end)
\end{verbatim}
where attrs is a table and val/attrs are overloaded for specific
callbacks - ie.
\begin{tabular}{llp{5cm}}
Callback & val & attrs (table)\\
\hline
starttag & name & |{ attributes (name=val).. }|\\
endtag & name & nil\\
text & || & nil\\
cdata & | | & nil\\
decl & "xml" & |{ attributes (name=val).. }|\\
pi & pi name & \begin{verbatim}{ attributes (if present)..
_text =
}\end{verbatim}\\
comment & || & nil\\
dtd & root element & \begin{verbatim}{ _root = ,
_type = SYSTEM|PUBLIC,
_name = ,
_uri = ,
_internal =
}\end{verbatim}\\
\end{tabular}
(starttag \& endtag provide the character positions of the start/end of the
element)
XML data is passed to the parser instance through the `parse' method
(Note: must be passed as single string currently)
\section{Options}
Parser options are controlled through the `self.options' table.
Available options are -
\begin{itemize}
\item
stripWS
Strip non-significant whitespace (leading/trailing) and do not
generate events for empty text elements
\item
expandEntities
Expand entities (standard entities + single char numeric entities only
currently - could be extended at runtime if suitable DTD parser added
elements to table (see obj.\_ENTITIES). May also be possible to expand
multibyre entities for UTF--8 only
\item
errorHandler
Custom error handler function
\end{itemize}
NOTE: Boolean options must be set to `nil' not `0'
\section{Usage}
Create a handler instance -
\begin{verbatim}
h = { starttag = function(t,a,s,e) .... end,
endtag = function(t,a,s,e) .... end,
text = function(t,a,s,e) .... end,
cdata = text }
\end{verbatim}
(or use predefined handler - see luaxml-mod-handler.lua)
Create parser instance -
\begin{verbatim}
p = xmlParser(h)
\end{verbatim}
Set options -
\begin{verbatim}
p.options.xxxx = nil
\end{verbatim}
Parse XML data -
\begin{verbatim}
xmlParser:parse(",
_type = ROOT|ELEMENT|TEXT|COMMENT|PI|DECL|DTD,
_attr = { Node attributes - see callback API },
_parent =
_children = { List of child nodes - ROOT/NODE only }
}
\end{verbatim}
\subsubsection{simpleTreeHandler}
simpleTreeHandler is a simplified handler which attempts to generate a
more `natural' table based structure which supports many common XML
formats.
The XML tree structure is mapped directly into a recursive table
structure with node names as keys and child elements as either a table
of values or directly as a string value for text. Where there is only a
single child element this is inserted as a named key - if there are
multiple elements these are inserted as a vector (in some cases it may
be preferable to always insert elements as a vector which can be
specified on a per element basis in the options). Attributes are
inserted as a child element with a key of `\_attr'.
Only Tag/Text \& CDATA elements are processed - all others are ignored.
This format has some limitations - primarily
\begin{itemize}
\item Mixed-Content behaves unpredictably - the relationship between text
elements and embedded tags is lost and multiple levels of mixed
content does not work
\item If a leaf element has both a text element and attributes then the text
must be accessed through a vector (to provide a container for the
attribute)
\end{itemize}
In general however this format is relatively useful.
\subsection{Options}
\begin{verbatim}
simpleTreeHandler.options.noReduce = { = bool,.. }
- Nodes not to reduce children vector even if only
one child
domHandler.options.(comment|pi|dtd|decl)Node = bool
- Include/exclude given node types
\end{verbatim}
\subsection{Usage}
Pased as delegate in xmlParser constructor and called as callback by
xmlParser:parse(xml) method.
\section{History}
This library is fork of LuaXML library originaly created by Paul
Chakravarti. Its original version can be found at
\url{http://manoelcampos.com/files/LuaXML--0.0.0-lua5.1.tgz}. Some files not
needed for use with luatex were droped from the distribution.
Documentation was converted from original comments in the source code.
\section{License}
This code is freely distributable under the terms of the Lua license
(\url{http://www.lua.org/copyright.html})
\end{document}