How to parse an XML file with RapidXml

Question

I have to parse an XML file in C++. I was researching and found the RapidXml library for this.

I have doubts about doc.parse<0>(xml).

Can xml be an .xml file or does it need to be a string or char *?

If I can only use string or char * then I guess I need to read the whole file and store it in a char array and pass the pointer of it to the function?

Is there a way to directly use a file because I would need to change the XML file inside the code also.

If that is not possible in RapidXml then please suggest some other XML libraries in C++.

Thanks!!!

Ashd

Answer 1

RapidXml comes with a class to do this for you, rapidxml::file in the rapidxml_utils.hpp file. Something like:

#include "rapidxml_utils.hpp"

int main() {
    rapidxml::file<> xmlFile("somefile.xml"); // Default template is char
    rapidxml::xml_document<> doc;
    doc.parse<0>(xmlFile.data());
...
}

Note that the xmlFile object now contains all of the data for the XML, which means that once it goes out of scope and is destroyed the doc variable is no longer safely usable. If you call parse inside of a function, you must somehow retain the xmlFile object in memory (global variable, new, etc) so that the doc remains valid.