What is the best open XML parser for C++?
I am looking for a simple, clean, correct XML parser to use in my C++ project. Should I write my own?
Answer
How about RapidXML? RapidXML is a very fast and small XML DOM parser written in C++. It is aimed primarily at embedded environments, computer games, or any other applications where available memory or CPU processing power comes at a premium. RapidXML is licensed under Boost Software License and its source code is freely available.
Features
- Parsing speed (including DOM tree building) approaching speed of strlen function executed on the same data.
- On a modern CPU (as of 2008) the parser throughput is about 1 billion characters per second. See Performance section in the Online Manual.
- Small memory footprint of the code and created DOM trees.
- A headers-only implementation, simplifying the integration process.
- Simple license that allows use for almost any purpose, both commercial and non-commercial, without any obligations.
- Supports UTF-8 and partially UTF-16, UTF-32 encodings.
- Portable source code with no dependencies other than a very small subset of C++ Standard Library.
- This subset is so small that it can be easily emulated manually if use of standard library is undesired.
Limitations
- The parser ignores DOCTYPE declarations.
- There is no support for XML namespaces.
- The parser does not check for character validity.
- The interface of the parser does not conform to DOM specification.
- The parser does not check for attribute uniqueness.
Source: wikipedia.org://Rapidxml
Depending on you use, you may use an XML Data Binding? CodeSynthesis XSD is an XML Data Binding compiler for C++ developed by Code Synthesis and dual-licensed under the GNU GPL and a proprietary license. Given an XML instance specification (XML Schema), it generates C++ classes that represent the given vocabulary as well as parsing and serialization code.
One of the unique features of CodeSynthesis XSD is its support for two different XML Schema to C++ mappings: in-memory C++/Tree and stream-oriented C++/Parser. The C++/Tree mapping is a traditional mapping with a tree-like, in-memory data structure. C++/Parser is a new, SAX-like mapping which represents the information stored in XML instance documents as a hierarchy of vocabulary-specific parsing events. In comparison to C++/Tree, the C++/Parser mapping allows one to handle large XML documents that would not fit in memory, perform stream-oriented processing, or use an existing in-memory representation.