minimal-xml-parser

This is a simple XML parser. It does no validation beyond requiring the input to be well-formed.

It produces its output as a DOM Document Fragment. The user is required to supply the DOM implementation. Any implementation that conforms to DOM (Core) Level 1 may be used. minimal-dom is one such implementation.

Installation

Using npm:

npm install minimal-xml-parser

Example Usage

const Parser = require('minimal-xml-parser');
const Document = require('minimal-dom');

const xml = '<example><greeting>Hello, world!</greeting></example>'

let fragment = new Parser(xml, new Document()).parse();

console.log(String(fragment.firstChild.firstChild));

// outputs:
// <greeting>Hello, world!</greeting>

API

This module exports one class as its default:

• Parser

Parser

The parser class provides the following methods:

• constructor
• parse

It also provides the following property on the class:

• XMLSyntaxError

new Parser(source, doc[, sourceName])

Parameters

• source: String The XML document or fragment to parse
• doc: Document An instance of a DOM Document that will be used to create the parser output.
• sourceName: String (Optional) The name of the source (such as a file name) to use in any errors produced by the parser. Defaults to "<INPUT>".

Return Value

A new Parser instance.

Description

Creates a new instance of Parser. The document is not actually parsed until parse is called.

parser.parse()

Parameters

None.

Return Value

A DocumentFragment containing the parsed content.

Description

Parses the XML source supplied to the constructor. It creates a new DocumentFragment using the Document supplied to the constructor and adds all encountered elements and their content to that fragment. If any errors are encountered, this method throws an XMLSyntaxError.

Parser.XMLSyntaxError

The XMLSyntaxError property of the Parser class provides a reference to the XMLSyntaxError class:

const XMLSyntaxError = require('minimal-xml-parser').XMLSyntaxError;

try {
  callSomeRoutineThatParsesXML();
} catch (e) {
  if (e instanceof XMLSyntaxError)
    // error due to a parsing failure
  else
    // some other error
}

XMLSyntaxError

XMLSyntaxError is an Error class, instances of which are thrown when the parser encounters an error. Its message contains a full description of the error. It also provides the following properties:

• sourceName: String The name of the source that produced the error.
• line: Number The line number where the error occurred
• column: Number The offset in characters on the line where the error occurred.
• expected: String A token or description of what was expected next for valid XML.
• actual: String The value that was encountered.