Clean xml parser

An xml parser with a clean predictable object model, created for use with typescript (but can be used with plain javascript too).

Installation

Just install from npm. You will also need the ts-optional-type package for the return type of some of the selectors, and ts-optionals for functions that manipulate those types:

npm install ts-clean-xml ts-optionals ts-optional-type

Usage

Parsing

Use the parseString function to parse some xml content:

import { parseString } from 'ts-clean-xml';

const xmlString = '<element attribute="value">Text</element>';

parseString(xmlString)
.then(xmlObject => console.log(xmlObject));

parseString returns a Promise that will resolve with an XmlElement.

Using the model

XmlElement

Represents an xml element. You can access an elements name, children and attributes. Note that the children can be a mix of other elements, and TextNodes. The name is a fully qualified xml name, in the form of an XmlName object.

You can create XmlElement objects conveniently with the element function.

Attribute

An attribute on an xml element. An attribute has a name and a value. The name is a fully qualified xml name, in the form of an XmlName object.

You can create Attribute objects conveniently with the attribute function.

TextNode

A TextNode is a span of text inside an element. They can be mixed with elements in some xml markups.

You can create TextNode objects conveniently with the text function.

XmlName

An XmlName represents a fully qualified xml name. It has a namespace, which is most commonly a URI, and a local name. The namespace can be an empty string, if the XML markup doesn't have a namespace.

You can create 'global' names, that is names without a namespace, with the globalName function. You can create namespaced name creation functions with the namespaced function, like so:

const xhtml = namespaced('http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml');
const h1Name = xhtml('h1');
const pName = xhtml('p');

The element and attribute functions also accept a string in the place of an XmlName, in which case a non-namespaced global name is created.

Query helpers

To make common actions simpler, the library includes some helper functions.

Predicates¨

isXmlElement: returns true if the given XmlElement or TextNode is an XmlElement. For typescript this works as a type guard.

isTextNode: returns true if the given XmlElement or TextNode is a TextNode. For typescript this works as a type guard.

hasName: takes a name (XmlName or string) and an XmlElement or an Attribute and returns true if the name matches the element or attribute.

hasAttribute: takes an attribute name (XmlName or string) and an XmlElement and returns true if the element has an attribute with the given name.

hasAttributeValue: takes a string value, an attribute name (XmlName or string) and an XmlElement and returns true if the element has an attribute with the given name and value.

hasTextValue: takes a string value and an XmlElement, and returns true if the given value is the only content of the element.

hasSingleChildMatching: takes a predicate and an XmlElement and returns true if the element has exactly one child element matching the predicate

hasAnyChildMatching: takes a predicate and an XmlElement and returns true if the element has at least one element matching the predicate

Selectors

getChildElements: returns all children that are elements for a given XmlElement.

getChildElementsMatching: returns all children that are elements for a given XmlElement that match the given predicate.

getChildElementsNamed: returns all children that are elements for a given XmlElement that have the given name.

getFirstChildElement: returns the first child element of the given XmlElement or None if there are no children

getFirstChildElementMatching: returns the first child element of the given XmlElement that matches the given predicate, or None if there are no matching child elements

getFirstChildElementNamed: returns the first child element of the given XmlElement that has the given name, or None if there are no child elements with that name

getSingleChildElement: returns the only child element of the given XmlElement or None if there are no or multiple children

getSingleChildElementMatching: returns the only child element of the given XmlElement that matches the given predicate, or None if there are none or multiple child matching elements

getSingleChildElementNamed: returns the only child element of the given XmlElement that has the given name, or None if there are none or multiple child elements with that name

getChildElementsByPath: given a list of names and a starting element, returns the elements that are at the end of the path formed by selecting the children named by the next name in the name list

getDescendantNodes: returns all descendant nodes for a given element, that is, all child nodes of the element, and their chidren etc. Walks through the nodes in depth first order.

getDescendantElements: returns all descendant elements for a given element, that is, all child elements of the element, and their chidren etc. Walks through the nodes in depth first order.

getDescendantElementsNamed: returns all descendant elements matching the given name for a given element. Walks through the nodes in depth first order.

getContainedText: returns all text content inside a given element, in depth first order. Like Node.textContent in the DOM.

getAttribute: returns the attribute with the given name on the given element. Returns None if the element doesn't have an attribute matching the name.

getAttributeValue: returns the value of an attribute with the given name on the given element. Returns None if the element doesn't have an attribute matching the name.