hexpat: wrapper for expat, the fast XML parser

This package provides a general purpose Haskell XML library using Expat to do its parsing (http://expat.sourceforge.net/ - a fast stream-oriented XML parser written in C). It is extensible to any string type, with String, ByteString and Text provided out of the box.

Basic usage: Parsing a tree (Tree), formatting a tree (Format).

Other features: Helpers for processing XML trees (Proc), trees annotated with XML source location (Annotated), XML cursors (Cursor), more intelligent handling of qualified tag names (Qualified), tags qualified with namespaces (Namespaced), SAX-style parse (SAX), and access to the low-level interface in case speed is paramount (IO). And, NodeClass contains type classes for generalized tree processing.

The design goals are speed, speed, speed, interface simplicity and modularity (in that order).

For introduction and examples, see the Text.XML.Expat.Tree module. For benchmarks, http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hexpat/

This package provides pure lazy parsing. However, Haskell's lazy I/O is problematic in some applications because it doesn't handle I/O errors properly and can give no guarantee of timely resource cleanup. In these cases, chunked I/O is a better approach: Take a look at the hexpat-iteratee package.

Credits to Iavor Diatchki and the xml (XML.Light) package for Proc and Cursor.

INSTALLATION: Unix install requires an OS package called something like libexpat-dev. On MacOSX, expat comes with Apple's optional X11 package, or you can install it from source. To install on Windows, first install the Windows binary that's available from http://expat.sourceforge.net/, then type (assuming you're using v2.0.1):

cabal install hexpat --extra-lib-dirs="C:\Program Files\Expat 2.0.1\Bin" --extra-include-dirs="C:\Program Files\Expat 2.0.1\Source\Lib"

Ensure libexpat.dll can be found in your system PATH (or copy it into your executable's directory).

ChangeLog: 0.15 changes intended to fix a (rare) "error: a C finalizer called back into Haskell." that seemed only to happen only on ghc6.12.X; 0.15.1 Fix broken Annotated parse.

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• hexpat-0.15.1.tar.gz [browse] (Cabal source package)
• Package description (revised from the package)

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• EvanMartin, StephenBlackheath, lysergia

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Candidates

• 0.20.4